


If I Had A Heart

by autobotscoutriella



Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: All of the Autobot Higher-Ups are Kind Of Assholes, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, alien planets, tf-rare-pairing Weekly Request Response
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-01-20 16:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18528958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella
Summary: Glyph expected a peaceful, if lonely, few weeks of solo datalogging on a brand-new planet. Blackarachnia expected to have plenty of space to experiment—and mope—on an uninhabited planet that Cybertron wasn't using anyway. Neither set of expectations worked out.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a fill for the [tf_rare_pairing](https://tf-rare-pairing.dreamwidth.org/) prompt "Blackarachnia/Glyph, "things left behind"" on Dreamwidth. I haven't ventured into TFA in forever and never considered this ship (rarest of the rarepairs, yay!), but the prompt grabbed me and wouldn't let go until I wrote something.

Planet 19XJA-145 was so remote it didn't even have a common name yet, just an unwieldy system designation that showed up under the tiny point of light on Glyph's holomap. While it had been satellite-mapped and confirmed to have a Cybertronian-accessible atmosphere a decade or so earlier under the previous Drouhard Academy head, no one had actually set foot on the planet's surface in the seventy-five orbital cycles since its identification. There hadn't been much need.

Now, though, that was changing. And she— _she_ , of all mechs—might be the very first one to visit.

"Are you sure you want _me_  to go, sir?" Glyph's voice sounded very small and uncertain, echoing off the walls of the oversized auditorium. Why they'd had to meet here instead of an office, she wasn't sure. Everything about the massive domed room seemed designed to make even the biggest Autobot feel tiny.

"Of course." Perceptor's oddly monotone voice sounded even flatter and more dronelike than usual in the echoing quiet. "Your record in the realm of data collection and analysis is excellent, and assessing planet 19XJA-145's long-term habitability is well within your skillset. Is there a reason you do not wish to take on this mission?"

"No! No, sir, it's an honor. That's not it. It's—" How could she explain that she had only just adjusted to Cybertron after returning from her studies on Gorlam Prime, and she didn't know how she would possibly adjust to this brand-new planet without a solid, familiar infrastructure? And more unsettlingly, didn't know how well she would work with the promised research team, even if she had a month or so before they showed up? What about Tap Out, her best friend—sometimes her only friend? And what if she really wasn't qualified to handle the initial analysis after all? She’d graduated with decent records, but not at the top of her class, and all of her fieldwork had been done in safe, neutral, pre-studied environments.

She couldn't say any of that aloud. Not when she was faced with Perceptor, the Academy Head, and Minerva, looking so proud her biolights were super-bright. "I just wanted to be sure. Just in case."

" _We_  are sure. Yours is the only uncertainty in the room, Researcher Glyph. Do you wish to accept this assignment?"

"You aren't obligated to take it," the Academy Head added, sounding alarmingly severe. "This is not an order, but an offer. If you would prefer to remain here, you may turn it down and it will not harm your future research prospects."

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anxiety or not, she _couldn't_  turn it down, even with the reassurance. And hadn’t she told herself over and over that she was going to do more? Be more? That she was going to be the best data researcher the Academy had ever seen? She couldn’t do that if she stayed hidden on Cybertron forever.

But it was still a struggle to get the words out.

"I—I accept."

***

Blackarachnia didn't know if the planet she'd landed on had a name, or native inhabitants, or if anyone from Cybertron had ever been there before. It was likely someone had looked—her proximity scan indicated she wasn't far from Cybertron, in universal terms—but there was no sign that ships had ever touched down here, or that anyone had ever lived here at all. The minimal scans she could get from her ship revealed sprawling metallic grasslands, layers of rough iron-laced stone, and a network of caves that seemed to baffle the ship’s computer, but no sign of sentient life anywhere.

 _Hospitable_.

Her ship, or what was left of it after a rough space bridge jump and an admittedly shaky landing, would serve as a decent shelter, and perhaps a temporary lab if it lasted that long. She would need an actual lab structure at some point, of course, and more supplies. She had retrieved what she could from the wreckage of the last one, but her ship was little more than a glorified escape pod. Far too cramped for effective work. The cave system below seemed stable enough, possibly with room to expand; once she had settled in, she would have to go explore her options.

It was a shame about the loss of Waspinator. She was accustomed to being _alone_ , in every sense of the word, and Waspinator hadn’t exactly been scintillating company, but he would have been another living being on this wasteland of a planet. And of course, without him, it would be far more difficult to continue her research on technorganic frames. She didn’t have another test subject handy.

...If she intended to continue it, of course. That decision was...up in the air, presently. Without a test subject, on a planet with neither organic nor metal life…

But both Earth and Cybertron were out of the question now, and her ship was unlikely to survive exiting the atmosphere, let alone get her back to a space bridge. Survival was more important than dealing with her loathed organic half—for the moment, at least.

And after what had happened with Optimus…

Blackarachnia pushed the thought aside with a shake of her head and a frustrated full-body twitch. She could deal with that later. For now, she needed a full inventory of her energon stockpile, and any lab supplies she would need to cobble together or do without.

She was only a third of the way through the energon inventory when the all-too-distinctive crackle of a large object cutting through the atmosphere overhead reached her audial sensors. Belatedly, the ship's proximity sensor beeped, followed by the overly-cheerful tones of an automated announcement. "Ship detected entering the atmosphere. Sensors indicate: Autobot vessel, markings confirmed Drouhard Science Academy."

 _Slag_.

***

Glyph had never seen a planet with so much _space_. Every way she turned, she could see for miles across wide rocky plains, and there wasn’t a road in sight. She wasn’t quite sure what the plant covering most of the plains was called—she wasn’t a botanist—but there was so _much_  of it, and from a preliminary scan, she could see that most of it was actually a single interlocking system spreading far and wide from the first root segment. Nothing that large could have survived on Cybertron; it would have been cleared out long ago, or destroyed in the Great War. Here, though, the system had had room to grow and spread.

Maybe this wasn’t such a terrifying assignment after all. The planet itself seemed…peaceful. Pleasant.

“Teletraan-V, scan for any kind of movement or signs of life.” Glyph didn’t really expect to find anything—and she was an archaeometrist, not a sociologist—but if there was some sort of life on this planet, she wanted to know before she went in to explore it. Stumbling across the local fauna while taking measurements was _not_  her idea of a good time.

The ship’s computer whirred, hummed, and responded, “Scans show multiple clusters of robotic organisms in a tunnel network below the surface, and two Cybertronian signals eight kliks north. One signal is also in the tunnel networks.”

“Cybertronian? That can’t be right.” From the map readout of the tunnel network, Glyph guessed that the robotic organisms were probably some type of cave-dwelling animal—and made a note to stay well away from those sectors—but the brighter, closer signal didn’t make sense. “No one else is assigned to this planet. What’s the ID?”

“There are no identifying signal tags or markings. The surface signal appears to be coming from a modified short-range transit shuttle, Alchemor-class.”

“How’d that get all the way out here? There’s no Alchemor-class ships in this system.” Those were _big_  ships and would have shown up on any radar—but the transit shuttles weren’t equipped to travel far from their home ships. She frowned at the control panel. “Rescan. Filter for Cybertronian life signs only. Exclude non-sentient vehicles.”

“There is one Cybertronian signal eight kliks north, in a tunnel network. Signal appears to be muted and has no faction indicator tag.”

 _Scrap_!

She knew she should call it in. After the recent Decepticon attacks—Command would have her  _helm_  if she didn’t. What if they were secretly regrouping on Planet 19XJA-145? What if there were _more_  of them, cloaked somehow?

But it wasn’t a Decepticon signal. There was nothing to identify it as hostile. And if she called in a problem immediately after landing and it turned out to be nothing, wouldn’t that prove that she shouldn’t have this assignment after all?

Glyph wavered, staring at the bright red point on the map.

“…Teletraan-V, lock the ship after I leave. Optic scan unlock only. Execute protocol Delta-Two if I don’t return in three hours.” Delta-Two was only an automated distress beacon—but if she was wrong, and she didn’t come back, it was better than not notifying anyone at all.

***

The cave network extended far deeper than Blackarachnia had expected, and the slopes tended to be steep and unstable. More than once, she found herself forced to revert to her spider form just to stay upright. As much as she hated her organic half, she had to admit it was better for unsteady ground and sharp drop-offs than her robot mode—though she stayed upright whenever possible and used her silk as a rappelling line anywhere that allowed for it.

She had yet to encounter any of the native fauna, which was probably for the best. Whatever they were, they ran in packs, and she wasn’t particularly fond of packs of creatures anymore.

…Well, she never had been. But after Archa-7 and Earth, they’d ended up very high on Blackarachnia’s List of Dislikes.

Earth had made that a much longer list.

She shook off the thought and eased her way down another slope, bracing each foot carefully to keep from sliding. She wasn't built for this, and it showed.

But it was worth it, because the narrow tunnel opened into a broad, mostly-flat cavern with a high roof and minimal stalactites. It was too wide to see clearly with nothing more than her chassis lights for illumination, but her night vision was decent enough for her to confirm it was a dead end. The steep tunnel was the only way in or out—perfect for a lab space that needed to be secret. Once she smoothed out that slope, it wouldn't be too complicated to disguise the entrance, or at least put up a few traps.

She moved cautiously out along the wall to her left, watching for any gaps in the floor, any organic or cybernetic matter that might indicate other inhabitants, and any hint of movement. There was no such thing as _too_  careful, anymore.

Halfway around the room, the walls dipped outward into a miniature alcove. It would serve as a decent storage space, Blackarachnia reflected, once she had equipment to store. It was a good workspace. Almost _too_  good—as if someone had created it.

That was an unsettling idea, but it wasn't impossible. She had stumbled across abandoned facilities on strange planets before. This cave might not have been intended as a lab, and it was so old she couldn't tell anymore if it had been created by erosion or tools, but it was certainly conveniently shaped for a working space.

She didn't get a chance to consider it further, because at that moment, pebbles rattled and clattered across the floor, followed by a high-pitched startled squeak and the crash of metal. Blackarachnia froze in place, optics fixed on the dark hole that was the entrance, extra limbs flexing behind her shoulders in preparation for an attack. If the Autobots had found her...

But the figure that tumbled out of the entrance, silhouetted by overly bright chassis lights, wasn't anyone Blackarachnia recognized, Autobot or Decepticon. It was a tiny frame, probably a minibot or close to it, and there were no visible weapons—but at the flash of a red badge, Blackarachnia pounced.

The tiny teal Autobot put up no resistance, hitting the ground hard with another yelp of surprise, and froze in place before Blackarachnia could even bring her stingers within a few feet of the little frame. She had no visible weapons, or any kind of defense at all—just huge blue optics that stared, stunned, at her attacker's helm.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" Blackarachnia demanded, fixing the little Autobot with her harshest glare. "Talk, before I paralyze you for good!"

The Autobot stayed frozen for so long Blackarachnia was starting to wonder just how hard she'd hit her head, but finally squeaked out "...You're very tall. I'm not here to fight _please don't kill me_ —"

 _Slag_.


	2. Chapter 2

The strange purple organic material kept Glyph’s arms pinned tight against her chassis, offering no room to struggle. Under different circumstances, she would have wanted to take samples of it, study it, bring it back to her ship for a full analysis—but here and now, all she could do was try to wriggle free of it, and wish that she’d just called the signal in and ignored it entirely.

“You expect me to believe that the Autobots didn’t send you to hunt me down?” The tall figure paced in front of her, unintentionally—probably, at least?—giving Glyph a full view of her unusual frame. Glyph had never seen an alt-mode that matched that frametype; it almost looked _o_ _rganic_ , all curves and extra limbs and proportions that didn’t fit with any mode she knew of.

(Granted, unlike Tap Out, she hadn’t memorized the Iaconian Alt-Mode Database in primary class. But she was pretty sure she would have remembered if she’d seen a frametype like that before.)

“I—I don’t even know who you are. I swear.” How could she convince her she was telling the truth? Proving a negative was impossible enough in field work, let alone in—was this an interrogation? Was she being _interrogated?_  She’d never been trained for interrogation! “I don’t—they just sent me here to analyze the-the local-you know, artifacts and climate and stuff.” Suddenly, she’d forgotten every technical term she knew. “I’m an archaeometrist. I’m not a combat build. I’m just here to research!”

“Likely story.” Her captor knelt and leaned in until they were almost forehead-to-forehead. Glyph found herself dry-mouthed and frozen, staring into four— _four!_ —brilliant, burning crimson optics. A Decepticon? But she didn’t have a Decepticon brand anywhere, and _oh Primus she’d never seen optics like that before, were they naturally like that or a mod, that was a remarkable shade of red, like looking into a sunset on the Acid Wastes—_

Her entirely situationally inappropriate reverie was abruptly cut off by her captor snapping, “And it’s a _coincidence_  that you just _happened_  to come find me, not a full solar cycle after I crashed on this rock? Optimus might fall for that, but I’m not that gullible.”

Glyph swallowed hard, and squeaked out, “Who’s Optimus?”

The maybe-not-Decepticon actually sat back on her heels at that, staring at Glyph as if she’d just announced that Ultra Magnus actually had two heads and was a Vok infiltrator. “You don’t _know_? I would have thought all of Cybertron knew about the _great_  Optimus Prime, Hero of the Autobots.” The words were laced with the heaviest sarcasm Glyph had ever heard.

She gulped, tried to think if she’d ever heard the name before, and gave up. “I…I don’t pay much attention to modern military stuff?”

“…Modern military stuff.” The strange bot shook her head in what was probably disbelief. “Not even Optimus’s team would come up with a lie _that_  unbelievable. You really don’t know, do you?”

“I’m—I’m just an archaeometrist. I don’t really get out much.” Glyph wiggled in place again, but the organic bonds were as tight as ever. “I know there was a space battle, and a curfew for a few weeks, and Sentinel Magnus stepped down and there were some prisoners, but I—I was so close to finishing the data on my last project, I skipped the parade. And...maybe all the relevant news posts, too. It was important—energon percentages in artifacts located near cooling magma veins versus fresh ones around volcanic sites…” She trailed off, because her captor had started laughing.

“Oh, for spark’s sake. You _skipped the parade_ for…energon percentages in magma veins?”

“…Yes?” It came out as a very small squeak this time.

“And they sent _you_ , solo, to check out the uninhabited planet? The little bitty archaeometrist who doesn’t even know about the battle that went down on Earth? Whose idea was _that_?”

“…Perceptor and the heads of Drouhard Academy?” Suddenly, that didn’t seem quite as impressive as it had when she’d been reading the formal assignment to herself on board the ship and quietly squealing with excitement.

“Just my luck. The one time I find a planet with no Autobots, the Academy drops a damn scientist on it.” For a moment, it appeared that her captor was about to stand up and walk away. Glyph almost hoped she would, but then, she was never going to get herself out of the weird purple bonds on her own…

A single razor-sharp dark claw flashed down in a sweeping arc. Glyph screamed, instinctively flinging her arms up to shield her helm from what she assumed was going to be a killing blow—

—and realized, a moment later, that her arms were _free_  now to shield her helm, and the purplish organic material was lying on the stone behind her, sliced in two.

“Get out of here.” The strange bot had already begun to move back into the shadows, blending into the darkness without even a glimmer of plating to mark out her frame. “Don’t bother trying to report this. By the time you do, I’ll be long gone. If I were you, I’d tell your bosses that you had an uneventful day, and there’s not a single sentient lifeform, organic, mechanoid, or otherwise, on this abandoned rock.”

Then she was gone, or at least, she seemed to be. Glyph couldn’t quite be sure, and by the time she’d regained enough composure to stand up and turn her chassis lights back on, the cavern was empty and her chronometer was beeping a warning that she had forty minutes to get back to her ship before the distress signal went out.

How the _scrap_  was she supposed to report this?

***

Blackarachnia scrambled blindly through the tunnels in her alt-mode, ignoring the stab of frustration that always came with being forced to use the organic form. Right now, she needed speed and agility, and her accursed alt-mode had both of those in spades. She needed to get out of the tunnels, back to her ship, and somewhere hidden that she could _think_. How had the scientist found her? What had she _missed_? If it really was a coincidence—and it had to be, no Autobot spy would come up with a cover story _that_  implausible—then fate, once again, had decided to stomp all over her chances of survival.

To her relief, her ship was entirely untouched (at least, besides the crash damage). Apparently the tiny Autobot hadn’t found the ship, or at least hadn’t bothered to explore it. The tripwires she’d set to stop anyone from entering were undisturbed, and unless the little archaeometrist was a far, far better actor than she seemed, she didn’t have the skills to get past even a basic booby trap.

Now what? She couldn’t leave the planet in a partially wrecked escape shuttle, no matter what she’d said to the intruder. Hoping that the scientist would take “I’m leaving” at face value and never, ever notice her again was a ridiculously naïve idea.  How had she found her in the first place…?

The console beeped cheerfully and announced, “Surface scan complete. Cybertronian signal detected eight kliks south. Sensor tags mark its origin as Drouhard Academy.”

“I _know_  that, damnit!” Blackarachnia slammed a fist down on the console, and then froze, staring at the flickering screen.

Of course. If the Autobot ship gave off a Cybertronian signal, then her shuttle probably did the same, and slag it, why hadn’t she thought to take out the transponder?

Five minutes, some chipped paint, and a round of curses that would have gotten her kicked out of any reputable establishment later, and Blackarachnia flung the shredded, sparking transponder out the exit hatch of her shuttle, watching it vanish into the distance. If it was still functioning after that, it was better made than any Elite Guard equipment she’d ever used.

Eight kliks south. At least she had a location for the Autobot now. She’d have to move north. Maybe there was another, further entrance to the tunnel network, or maybe she would stay out of it altogether and find a new lab.

It was a shame about that perfect cavern, but she couldn’t take chances now. Especially if the Autobot had reported her presence, which she probably had. If Optimus Prime found out she was here, there would no doubt be some sort of half-assed rescue attempt that would expose her for what she was to all of Cybertron, if it didn’t get her killed in the process.

If _Sentinel_  found out she was here…

Well, she wasn’t going to think about that, because she liked the possibility of being able to sleep at night, and if she thought about how Sentinel had reacted to her organic mode for very long, she’d be spending the entire night counting electro-sheep. She might have to anyway, considering the huge, irrational risk she’d just taken.

_Damnit, Arachnia, why the spark did you let her go?_

***

“…And that’s all.” Glyph swallowed hard and hoped her shaking hands weren’t reflected in her voice. “I haven’t encountered any of the local fauna yet, but the preliminary scans indicate they’re not in this area. I’ll be mapping some of the tunnel network tomorrow.”

As long as they didn’t ask why she hadn’t mapped more of the tunnel, that would be fine. Probably. They had only asked her about the landscape—they hadn’t asked for a report on any encounters with mysterious organic-ish Cybertronians. So she wasn’t breaking the rules, exactly. Just…bending them.

Though why she was bending the rules for a total stranger who’d nearly killed her, she really wasn’t sure.

“Excellent. Send your maps when you have them, Researcher Glyph.” The archivist, whose name she couldn’t recall even though she knew she’d met him, looked bored out of his mind. She couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t reported any of the _interesting_  events of the day. (Well, except for the scans of the rock layers with shapes that could have been metal, but she was used to watching her listeners’ optics glaze over when she started in on that.)

“Copy that. Glyph out.” She ended the vidcall with a sigh, and stepped out of her ship to watch the distant blue-tinted sun sink toward the horizon.

She should have reported the stranger. Especially since she might have been a Decepticon—who knew what that might mean for Cybertron? But she hadn’t looked like any of the pictures Glyph vaguely remembered from history class. Weren’t Decepticons bigger, with huge weapons and heavy armor and military alt-modes? The mystery Cybertronian had been tall (very tall. Unbelievably tall. Prime-height, at least) but she hadn’t been bulky or visibly heavily armored. She might not be a Decepticon.

_You expect me to believe the Autobots didn’t send you to hunt me down?_

…All right, that was…suspicious, at best.

Maybe she’d just…wanted to avoid the war? After all, if she was a Decepticon, surely she would have just killed Glyph, or taken her back to the rest of the Decepticons. Glyph might not have paid much attention to recent military events, but she’d studied more than enough of it from the Great War. Decepticons were ruthless, brutal, vicious, but not every non-Autobot had been a Decepticon. Some Cybertronians hadn’t wanted to fight. Maybe this one had been trying to dodge the draft and was still expecting to be tracked down.

…After four million stellar cycles, some of which had been spent in peace after the Decepticons had been driven out of the galaxy and the draft had been more or less permanently shut down. She’d also somehow known more about recent events than Glyph did, but was still on the run from the Autobots for…reasons.

“Scrap.” Glyph stared out at the fields, taking on a faint bluish glow as the sunlight dimmed, and wondered yet again what had possessed her to cover for someone who was probably an enemy.

Not probably. Definitely. There was almost no way she wasn’t an enemy.

…But tiny odds were still odds, right? Maybe there was something she hadn’t thought of. Maybe she hadn’t just doomed Cybertron to Decepticon attack by letting a scout go unreported.

No. She couldn’t have done that. She would have known if she had, right?


	3. Chapter 3

Two local solar cycles passed before Glyph worked up the courage to go back into the tunnels. She spent the first few hours of her initial exploration on edge, waiting for the mysterious Cybertronian to pounce out of the shadows and pin her to the floor at any second—but nothing happened, even when she ducked around terrifyingly dark corners and stumbled down rough shale slopes. If the stranger was still around, she was keeping well out of Glyph’s way, and really, she couldn’t be surprised.

Some treacherous part of her processor found that a bit disappointing. She crushed it resolutely. Of _course_  it was a good thing that the apparently hostile mech seemed to be long gone. Another run-in would not, under any circumstances, have been a good thing. Now she could get on with her work, without worrying about being ambushed and murdered.

But it was surprisingly hard to focus on rock layers, even the fascinating ones that were visible in the tunnel walls and suggested that perhaps someone had carved out this section of tunnel at some point rather than it forming naturally. Her thoughts kept drifting back to the strange curved frame, with its apparently organic lines in stark contrast to Cybertronian metal. Who was she? Where was she really from? Was she from Cybertron, or somewhere else entirely?

With a shake of her head, Glyph forcibly jerked her attention back to the wall, where she was supposed to be examining some marks on the stone that could have been from tools, or could have been from liquid gradually wearing the stone down. It should have been easier to work out the difference. She wasn’t nearly focused enough on the task at hand, and that was a problem. What would the Academy say if they found out she was too distracted by a strange encounter to do her job?

…What would they say if they found out about the encounter at all?

That was better left unthought. No one ever needed to find out about that, and they wouldn’t, _if_  she did the job they were counting on her to do. All she had to do was prove she was worthy of this mission, and they wouldn’t question anything else that may or may not have happened and been left out of a report.

Her worries were abruptly interrupted by what sounded like a _chirp_ , echoing down the narrow tunnel. She snapped upright, reaching for the tiny stun baton she’d started carrying on her hip, though it probably wouldn’t do any good. It didn’t have much power in the first place, she had never been good at the mandatory self-defense classes back at the Academy, and when she’d first fished it out of her emergency kit, her hands had started shaking so badly she’d dropped it—but if the local fauna were hostile, or if the stranger decided to come back and kill her, it was better than nothing.

A shadow loomed up along the wall, at the very edge of the circle illuminated by her chassis lights. Whatever it was, it was four-legged, dramatically elongated, and—were those fangs?

Glyph froze in place, and waited.

***

Her ship wasn’t going to move. It was probably time to admit that.

Blackarachnia flipped the switch again anyway, jamming it into the _Active_  position and holding it there until it finally became painfully clear the engines weren’t going to do anything more than sputter and groan. She was no mechanic, and the crash shuttle hadn’t exactly come with an owner’s manual; with no supplies and no experience fixing this kind of tech, repairing the ship was likely impossible. All she could do was keep trying to force it to come back online, and curse the terrible luck and stiff, rusty piloting systems that had caused the crash in the first place.

Well, her piloting might have had something to do with it too, but she _could_  have pulled out of that spiral if the systems hadn’t been apparently rusted tight. It was more the ship’s fault than hers, really.

Wiping grease smudges off the side of her helmet, she kicked the under-console panel shut. None of the wires had proven useful for restarting the ship, and now some of them were too burned-out to use for anything else. She had planned to start pulling the shuttle apart once she found a new lab, using it to build makeshift equipment, but if she couldn’t even _get_  the shuttle to her new lab, that plan was as useless as a spider in the ocean.

And on top of that, time was running out. Two solar cycles, almost three, was more than enough time for the Autobots to have raised the alarm and sent out a combat patrol to find her. She was surprised they hadn’t already turned up, but maybe the scientist hadn’t made her report until the next day.

(No, she could not hope that the tiny teal scientist had left her out of the report entirely. She knew better than to expect something like that even from her former best friends; a stranger had no reason to spare her. She had reported it. The only question was what, exactly, she’d said, and to who she’d said it.)

The tunnel network, still visible on the only working map, seemed temptingly deserted. If the little scientist had gone back in, she hadn’t pinged on Blackarachnia’s admittedly semi-functional shuttle radar. The large cavern was obviously out, but maybe there were more buried further in, places that the Autobot hadn’t found yet. If her hypothesis that someone had _created_  or at least modified the caves was correct, surely they would have built more than one space that would work for her purposes.

That would, of course, require her to _carry_  all of the shuttle parts with her, and it would be a much longer trip than the last one if she wanted to avoid the Autobot. _Ugh_. Another reason it would have been nice to not be completely by herself. She wasn’t _built_  for heavy labor. That would take _weeks_ , if not longer.

“This is your fault,” she informed the ship. “You and the glitch who built that ship in the first place. Who doesn’t build in a rust failsafe? _Whose_  idea was that?”

The ship, predictably, didn’t answer.

Blackarachnia swore, picked up the few tools she’d scattered across the console in her initial attempt at repair, and looked at the map again. Maybe this time she would move north, away from the direction the scientist had come from. The ship’s map of the planet surface was clunky and unclear, but it showed the tunnels extending that direction, complete with a wide, featureless plain above. It was still one of the places the inevitable Autobot patrols would check, but perhaps if she strategically blocked off a few tunnels, avoided leaving any obvious traces of her presence, maybe left a rockslide or two…

It was a long shot. An uncomfortable, unstable, unpredictable long shot. _Which you wouldn’t be taking if you hadn’t let the cute little harmless scientist go,_  she scolded herself. _Could have been moved in by now, but no, you got soft and let her run off alive. Idiot. Didn’t you learn anything from Optimus making that same mistake every time?_

Apparently she hadn’t.

She shook off the frustration with some effort, locked down what remained of the ship’s computer, and copied the tunnel map to her HUD. Sitting around cursing herself for mistakes would do her no good now.

***

Glyph clutched her stun baton in both hands, as if that would somehow steady them, and watched the shadow creep toward her along the wall, accompanied by the faint click of steps ( _claws? maybe claws, oh Primus_ ). It didn’t look like a bipedal form, but it was impossible to tell from a shadow—it could be an unusual alt-mode, or a root mode with extra limbs, or someone trying  to disguise their frame, or, or—

 A silvery canine shape covered in metallic fur, no taller than Glyph’s knee, trotted into the dim circle of light. Golden optics blinked curiously up at her, as if it had only just noticed that it wasn’t alone; then it sat down, tail sweeping across the ground behind it.

—or it was some of the local fauna. That was a possibility too.

Glyph stared wide-eyed at the creature, waiting for it to pounce or swat at her or do _something_ , but it stayed where it was, watching her expectantly. Out of the shadows, it was…cute, almost, if unsettlingly organic for her tastes. Its fur reflected the light, taking on a shimmer, and it looked invitingly soft. It was tiny—far smaller than the ominous looming shadow had suggested—and its ears perked up at the slightest movement from Glyph, following her as she shifted her weight.

Was it sentient? Glyph crouched down so she was on optic level, setting down the stun baton but keeping it within easy reach. “Uh—hello?” Maybe it was trying to communicate.

The creature yawned, baring tiny white teeth that had Glyph scrambling backward, and looked away. Glyph swallowed hard. Maybe it didn’t speak any language known to Cybertronians. Or maybe it was just a nonsentient animal and it was waiting for her to…move? Feed it? She didn’t know what to do with one of those. She’d never had a pet, or even a drone.

“I—I don’t have any food.” Even if she had, could it have consumed energon or oil? They looked mechanical, but with an organic twist—and it was a different planet and ecosystem entirely. “No food.”

It blinked, tail swishing a pattern into the dust. It didn’t seem to mean anything, as far as she could tell.

“Are you lost?” It seemed very comfortable with Cybertronians, which was unsettling. There had never been Cybertronians on this planet before…had there?

What if it belonged to the stranger she’d first met in the tunnels? What if she hadn’t been a Cybertronian at all, but some type of organic-mechanical hybrid just like this little creature? Maybe the planet was inhabited after all—but then why hadn’t it shown up on any scans? Glyph reached out a cautious hand, waiting to see if the creature would dart away, but all it did was cock its head to the side and continue moving its tail.

“Do you understand me?” It really didn’t seem to, but she never could tell with creatures like this. “Hey, I—I’m not going to hurt you. My name’s Glyph. I’m here to study this planet. Can you show me what you want?”

At the words ‘show me’, the creature’s ears pricked. It hopped upright, looked from Glyph to the tunnel and back again, and trotted down the tunnel past her into the darkness.

“Hey, wait!” Glyph scooped up her tools, tossed them into subspace, and jogged after it. For something so tiny, the creature moved fast, and she almost ran into a wall before rounding a corner and spotting it in the middle of the tunnel. It blinked at her one more time, then took off again.

Driven by an entirely inexplicable (but very scientific) curiosity, Glyph followed it down into the darkness.

***

Blackarachnia didn’t like to admit concern, but she had to note that the tunnels were sloping down more and more the further north she traveled, and the climate was starting to change. Where the southern tunnels had been cool and dry, these had warmed steadily as she made her way further down, and the air was gradually becoming humid. Aside from the annoyance of having to deal with _moisture_ , the heat made her wonder if perhaps this world’s magma layer was much closer to the surface than the energon veins on Cybertron. If the tunnels were volcanic in origin, that could be a problem for long-term habitation. Building a lab above an active volcano was an appealing aesthetic, but the risk of destroying all her work at once was far too high.

But just as she was starting to wonder if she should have taken her chances above-ground with the Autobots, the tunnel widened, and a breeze brushed against her plating. The tunnels so far had been pitch-dark, but when she rounded a corner, dim light shone from an opening ahead; it wasn’t nearly bright enough to be an exit, but perhaps a gap in the cave ceiling closer to the surface.

Relieved, Blackarachnia broke into a light jog, hurrying down the tunnel toward the inviting light. She could deal with traveling underground, of course—but it was hardly her preferred state of affairs, if she had other options, and traveling in tunnels with their own light source was far better than picking her way through the darkness.  

The cavern sprawled out at the end of the tunnel, so wide the edges were hidden even in the dim light spilling from a massive crack in the tunnel ceiling. If she looked straight up and tuned her optics to match the light, Blackarachnia could just barely make out hints of what looked like organic roots in the crack; maybe the plants on the surface had started to grow down into the crack after it formed. Aside from a small pool in the center of the cavern, probably welling up from below ground, it seemed empty.

Blackarachnia let out a vent she hadn’t realized she was holding, feeling her shoulders and spine relax. _Finally. Actual space with no Autobots._  She would have to check it out, of course, but it was starting to look promising. Perhaps the crack could even be widened and reinforced so she could use it to drop the equipment in directly instead of dragging it through the tunnels.

She had made her way around a quarter of the outside wall, marking spots that were open and flat enough for equipment and a few places where perhaps she could eventually run cables for power when she heard the splashing.

The cavern wasn’t deserted, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "local fauna" Glyph meets are loosely based on Avatar: The Last Airbender's [Knowledge-Seeker fox spirits](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/avatar/images/5/50/Knowledge_Seeker_getting_a_treat.png/revision/latest?cb=20131003091655). I thought they were cute.


	4. Chapter 4: The Shark That Should Not Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Static sharks](https://autobotscoutriella.dreamwidth.org/2099.html) are another piece of Cybertronian fauna I came up with after watching one too many episodes of Shark Week.
> 
> Title credit goes to the friend who encouraged me to write this in the first place--it was such a Blackarachnia phrase I had to use it, even though I don't normally title my chapters.

Blackarachnia crept cautiously out from the wall, limbs tense and every cable poised to strike at the slightest hint of hostile movement. The splashing had stopped, but she could still see something moving, shadows shifting in the mud and something occasionally reflecting back bits of light; if her quick calculations based on what little she could see were correct, it was almost as large as she was, though it seemed to have flattened itself against the ground rather than straightening up. Could it be an aquatic creature of some kind? Or was it an enemy, disguised and sneaking its way toward her under cover?

Her power wouldn’t work well on an organic, but there seemed to be only one of the creatures, and none of the movements she had seen so far had been quick. Perhaps she still had time to get the drop on it.

She edged in as close as she dared, taking each step cautiously as the ground became softer and more treacherous. The closer she came to the center, the more her feet sunk in, forcing her to move carefully to avoid slipping. Perhaps the small pool had recently flooded, or maybe it had rained; was the creature trying to escape the water, or get back into it?

When she was less than three yards away from it, she switched on her chassis lights to maximum and snapped, “Don’t move, or you’re a dead mech! What do you want?”

The creature thrashed sharply away from her, and a long, slender, whip-shaped tail flashed up out of the water and toward her frame almost faster than the optic could follow. Before she could dodge, it snapped across her side, sending a shocking jolt through her frame and knocking her back and down to one knee. Cursing, Blackarachnia fell, struggling to scramble back and away from the creature as it spun and dove back into the pool with a splash.

By the time she could straighten up, it was gone, leaving only a faint ripple in the dark liquid. Blackarachnia drew back from the pool’s edge, examining her arm and side with a pained grimace. _Slag it all._

The damage wasn’t serious; on closer review, her arm and side were lightly dented, and the aftereffects of the electric shock sent pins and needles rippling through her side, but the initial pain was already fading, and with it, the surprise (not panic. Never panic. She was a _scientist_  and a _Decepticon_  and they  _did not panic_ ) that had kept her from identifying the creature.

But it _had_  been a familiar shape, one she thought she recognized from old Elite Guard field trips (and less-authorized nights spent checking out the local sights). The problem with that was that she couldn’t be right; none of _those_  were supposed to be present on this planet.

She shifted just a little bit further forward and leaned out to shine the lights on the edge of the pool where the creature had been crawling. There, in the mud, were the distinctive fin imprints and drag trail of a decently sized blind static shark, just like the ones she’d seen in Cybertron’s murky, damp undercity tunnels.

“What the forklift is a Cybertronian static shark doing on _this_ rock?”

***

Glyph followed the canine until she had completely lost track of both tunnels and time, only pausing occasionally to wonder if she would be able to find her way back out. At the first few twists and turns, she had marked the wall with fluorescent paint dabs, but for such a small creature, the canine moved remarkably quickly, and it was all she could do to keep up with it even when not stopping at each corner. The tunnel network was far wider and more convoluted than she had imagined based on the surface scans; as it ran deeper, the wall patterns and texture changed to something that looked like it might have been carved out by lava millions of years earlier, and she wondered if perhaps this planet had been largely volcanic once upon a time. To her slight annoyance, though, the canine seemed to be on a mission and gave her no time to stop and examine the rock.

“Where are you going?” The creature had never answered, but she suspected it understood, or at least listened; its ears pricked in her direction every time she called to it. It didn’t seem sentient, but maybe the species was domesticated, or had been, and was responding to cues she didn’t know she was giving. It seemed impossible, given the lack of any recent sentient life on this planet, but perhaps the little pseudo-organics lived as long as Cybertronians did, or longer.

She was so occupied wondering what the little canine wanted and where it had come from that she didn’t see it stop and abruptly sit down in the middle of the tunnel, and almost tripped directly over it. It made a small yipping noise, the first sound she’d heard out of it, scooted away, and sat licking a paw and looking expectantly up at her.

“…Now what?” Glyph offered it a hand, the way she’d seen other mechs approach unfamiliar pets. The canine examined her fingers with apparent interest, tiny teeth just barely visible as it opened its mouth slightly, and then butted the top of its head against her arm. “I—I don’t know what you want. Is there something I’m supposed to see here?” It seemed like a perfectly normal tunnel junction, with another yawning gap opening off the main tunnel. “What’s in there?”

She could have sworn the canine rolled its optics. It butted her arm again impatiently, apparently waiting for her to do something; when she didn’t, it stood up and took a few steps into the dark tunnel. Whatever it wanted her to see, it was in there.

Something looked _wrong_  about the tunnel. It looked more angular than the one she was still standing in, as if it had been deliberately carved out of the rock rather than worn, and when she took a cautious step forward, her chassis lights reflected on something bright in the distance. She didn’t want to go in there. She wanted to go back to her work and pretend she hadn’t followed a tiny local creature so far into the tunnels that she didn’t know how to get back.

But she had come this far, and maybe, _maybe_  this would be the type of discovery she could report back on. Maybe it was some type of ore, or…

Glyph followed the canine down the tunnel cautiously, walking on tiptoe without realizing it. It seemed like the sort of place she should be quiet. Every few strides, her lights would catch something metallic at the end of the tunnel or along the walls; bluish-silver streaks traced the tunnel floor and walls in a few places. It almost looked like the terraformed roads on Gorlam Prime…but that was impossible here.

Wasn’t it?

Then she stepped out of the tunnel into a cavern, lit up nicely by the reflection of her chassis lights on metal, and her jaw dropped.

From what she could see, it was a large cavern, but almost all of the space was taken up by the partially wrecked remains of what was unmistakably a spaceship. To Glyph, it looked Cybertronian—more than that, judging from the markings that she only vaguely recognized from a required course eons ago, it looked _ancient_  Cybertronian.

Throwing caution to the wind, Glyph switched her chassis lights over to maximum and all but ran to the ship, reaching out to touch the worn bluish metal in awe. She had never seen a find like this one—all the sites she’d worked with had been open and under review for decades, if not centuries or more. This was _impossible_ \--but there it was, an ancient Cybertronian ship sitting right in front of her.

The little canine yipped, drawing her attention to where it sat in a gap in the ship’s side, licking one paw. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it looked _smug_. It had earned it, she supposed—it had found a _ship_! A Cybertronian ship!

On closer investigation, the ‘gap’ was an airlock, wrenched halfway open by some powerful force long ago. There was more than enough room for Glyph to fit, and what little she could see of the interior looked intact. She could investigate, if she wanted to. Maybe the old flight logs would still be intact, and she could find out when the ship had arrived, and maybe even figure out why no one knew about it…

She shouldn’t. Protocol was to report back and wait for a team in situations like this. If she got hurt, or if she ended up stranded, she had no way to call for help.

But it would take _ages_ for a team to show up, and Glyph didn’t want to wait that long. What if that flight log information was important? What if it changed the whole approach to the planetary survey? This was _her_  research mission; shouldn’t it be her call whether or not to investigate?

…No, probably not, but no one else was around to object, and that meant that it was her decision.

She carefully stepped around the little canine, which rubbed up against her leg, and made her way into the ship with the creature at her side.

***

Blackarachnia drew a slow vent to calm herself, but she couldn’t quite pull her optics away from the pool yet, wondering if the static shark would come back. It was _Cybertronian_ \--it should not have been there, under any circumstances. She needed to examine it, find out if it was really the same species or if it was some bizarre offshoot, and perhaps look into its adjustment to the local area. She hadn’t planned to study biology, but the _unfortunate incident_  on Archa-7 and her subsequent work in Decepticon labs had given her a decent grounding in genetic work; surely she could figure out enough to analyze the shark and determine its origins, especially if she could pull together enough of her ship to connect to Cybertron’s networks.

But she couldn’t sit around watching the pool all day, either. The tingling in her arm and side had faded to a dull throb that would be gone by the end of the day, and that meant it was time to continue her investigation.

“This could work.” It had been a long time since she’d resorted to talking to herself, but it was too quiet these days. “This is still the perfect space for a lab. Plenty of space far enough from the pool.” And of course, if she wanted to examine the shark, setting up her equipment right there couldn’t hurt.

A few minutes’ work wove together a web trap that could stay buried in the mud to catch anything that crawled out of the pool. Blackarachnia wasn’t entirely sure how well it would work on a wet, unbelievably flexible static shark, but at least the organic webbing would give them nothing to sense and avoid. She could always go fishing later if it failed, but for now, she needed to finish her survey of the cavern. If this was going to be her new laboratory, it needed solid walls, a back entrance, and most importantly, _no Autobots._

For the first half-circuit of the room, she found nothing out of the ordinary. The walls might have been cut by volcanic activity, or maybe water—perhaps the pool had shrunk long ago—and seemed sturdy enough, with no rough areas that might have been a rockslide hazard. The ground was stable enough, as long as she stayed well away from the mud at the pool’s edge, and there was plenty of room to do that.

Then the hand resting on the wall brushed up against something that was _unquestionably_  not rock.

Blackarachnia let out a thoroughly undignified squeak and jumped away from the cold surface, bringing her other hand up to shield herself before her lights flashed across the wall and the substance registered.

_Metal_. Specifically, metal etched with ancient Cybertronian symbols that she recognized from her days at the academy, reading EXTERNAL AIRLOCK: DO NOT BREAK SEAL.

For a moment, all she could do was stare at the faint silvery surface embedded in the rock.

“Slag.”

She couldn’t be entirely sure how big the ship was; it was almost entirely buried in the rock, with only a few square feet of the airlock panel visible. But judging from the existence of an external airlock, it was large, and judging from the age of those glyphs and the apparent wear on the metal, it was ancient.

Maybe the Autobot scientist hadn’t been sent here for _basic planetary scans_  after all. She hadn’t read the tiny mech as a particularly good liar, but if the Autobots knew about an ancient ship, of _course_  they would send someone to look into it, with a good cover story in case the Decepticons had done the same. It made _sense_.

Mumbling curses, Blackarachnia jammed two claws into the barely-visible seam and scraped down, clearing away dirt and rock to expose the airlock seal. There wasn’t much to it, but she could clear away enough of it to break into the ship, if she wanted to. And of _course_  she wanted to.

There was no sign of Autobot activity in the cavern, and the last time she’d seen the scientist, she had been moving south. Maybe she didn’t know where the ship was, or it had shifted away from where it should have been, but whatever the reason, it looked like Blackarachnia had found it first. She had every intention of taking _full_  advantage of that. A decently sized ship would have energon, a medcenter or at least a few medikits, and maybe some scanners or even a science lab if it had been an exploratory vessel. Some of it might have rusted out or been crushed, but if the airlock was intact, at least some of the ship must be too.

It took a long time and a lot of grunting, straining, and cursing, but she managed to clear the rock and dirt away from as much of the airlock seal as she could reach, exposing the panel edges. Missing her larger, stronger Decepticon companions for the first time since leaving Earth, Blackarachnia braced herself against the wall, wedged her claws into the seal, and _pulled_.

For several agonizing moments, it felt like her frame might give way before the ancient airlock did. She lacked the raw power of other Decepticons, and her organic half had far too many inconvenient, unexpected flaws for her to be entirely confident in her own abilities anymore. But all at once, the metal tore loose with a creak and a groan, and the entire airlock bent back, exposing a dark hole like a wound in the side of the ship.

Blackarachnia hesitated only long enough to switch back to night vision and turn off her chassis lights. Autobot traps wouldn’t show up well under normal headlights, but night vision was likely to catch most of them—and after all, if they had sent a scientist after this ship, it was probably valuable.

Then, taking each step carefully and silently, she made her way into the ancient ship.


	5. Chapter 5

No matter how quietly Glyph tried to walk, her footsteps echoed down the silent dark corridors, metal clicking on dusty metal. Every now and then, she stumbled on loose rock, which sent small stones rattling and clanging through the ship and always left her frozen until the sounds had died away. There was no real reason to be quiet, but loud footsteps felt almost like desecration in such an ancient, long-silent space.

The tiny canine padding silently at her side seemed to agree; it turned glowing golden optics on her after one particularly loud stumble as if judging her ability to walk. She could almost hear the words _Can’t you be quiet?_

“I’m _trying_ ,” she stage-whispered in its general direction. It blinked up at her and placed a paw lightly on her foot, as if trying to keep her still; she could just imagine the response. _Well, you’re not trying very hard._

“You need a name.” If she was going to carry on conversations with the wildlife, which was probably a sign she needed to get out more once she went back to Cybertron, she needed something to call it. “…Mercury?” It wasn’t the most imaginative name, but the dusty silverish fur made her think of the element. “Mercury. What do you think?”

The creature stared silently up at her. If it had an opinion on its new name, it didn’t care to share it verbally.

“Mercury it is then.”

The walls were worn and dusty, but mostly still intact, occasionally marked with writing that Glyph couldn’t read. Some of it had been etched into the metal; in other places, only worn paint traces remained of what might have been labels or decoration. Every now and then, she passed doors, sealed beyond any hope of prying open or blocked with piled rubble, and dusty transparisteel windows with nothing visible behind them but darkness.

As far as she could tell, the ship had been abandoned for millennia, maybe longer—maybe even from before the Great War. There were no signs of ancient blaster fire or blade scars on the walls and floor, so it hadn’t been a battle site. Maybe a mechanical failure had caused a crash?

A clang echoed down the hallway. Glyph froze reflexively—and realized that she hadn’t stumbled this time, or even touched a rock.

She looked at Mercury, who blinked silently up at her. In the glow of her chassis lights, the ground around them both was reasonably clear, with no sign of anything that could have made the noise. Instinctively, she drew closer to both the little canine and the wall, turning her chassis lights up to maximum and scanning the hallway. Nothing, not even a shadow.

Maybe she was just jumpy. It could have been anything—a falling rock, the ship settling from the weight of someone walking into it after so many stellar cycles, maybe another member of Mercury’s species outside poking around.

But just in case, she turned off the lights entirely and waited for her optics to adjust to the darkness, keeping one hand on the wall so she was sure she could find it again. She wasn’t sure if it would help, but if there really was something out there in the dark, maybe turning off the lights would keep it from finding her.

She had been trying hard not to think about the likelihood of bodies turning up somewhere in the wreck. The ship seemed abandoned, but if it had crashed, surely not all of the crew had survived. Her job didn’t often involve corpse retrieval, and she wasn’t at all sure how she would feel about encountering ancient, fossilized frames buried in this mysterious ship—especially in the dark, by herself. Unsettling mental images rose all too quickly in her processor— _sparkeaters, animals with big fangs and a taste for Cybertronian, some ancient monster that survived in the basement of the ship all these years—_

She scolded herself internally, squashed the thoughts of monsters and creatures before the nerves could turn into full-blown panic, and forced herself to keep walking.

But when she rounded a corner, the barely lit figure she nearly ran head-first into was _very_  much alive, and _very_  much not fossilized.

Glyph squeaked in panic and threw herself backward, trying to scoop up Mercury and shield it from the tall figure. It yelped and wiggled away, nearly overbalancing them both, and she found herself staring up into four vivid, glowing, sunset-red optics.

***

One day. _One day_  without running into an Autobot, that was all Blackarachnia wanted.

Apparently not even dire threats could keep this one away. Points for persistence, she supposed.

“What the scrap are you doing here?” she demanded, covering the jolt of _something’s coming after me in the dark_  panic that had left her with slightly shaky limbs. “I told you to _stay away from—"_

“It was an accident!” The little teal Autobot scrambled backward, trying to hold on to—was that a cat? No, it was some kind of small canine, with metallic fluffy fur and gold optics and absolutely no intention of being held. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know you were here! I was just exploring this—this ship and I thought it was—is it yours? I thought it was abandoned—I didn’t know—“

Blackarachnia muttered a curse under her breath, staring down at the Autobot. “All right, all right, keep your doors attached. I’m not going to shoot you.”  _Yet._   She wasn’t going to let this one out of her sight alive again. Whether or not she’d talked last time, she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut forever. “Just tell me what you’re doing here. What do you mean you’re exploring this ship? Who else knows you’re out here?”

The Autobot finally gave up on hugging her pet, which hopped clear of her arms and nipped at her hand. “Ow! Ow. I—I’m just—I’m—it’s my job. I’m supposed to—to analyze this planet for Cybertronian c-colonization, but this ship—we didn’t know it was supposed to be here, so I—I’m trying to figure out how long it’s been here and who brought it and how all our surface scans missed it and—are you going to kill me?”

Blackarachnia made no attempt to hide her optic roll. Definitely not a spy, then. No Autobot soldier or spy would have been _that_  incoherent in the face of danger; even Optimus’s little space-bridge repair crew had been better under pressure. “Not at the moment. So you’re a researcher, huh. Who knows you’re here?”

“The—the Academy Head and the Council, probably. And—and Minerva. My old mentor. And my best friend Tap Out. And—” The Autobot stammered for a moment. “I had to tell them I was off the planet. But I—I didn’t—I haven’t reported the ship yet. I just found it. If—if it’s your ship I’ll just leave. I haven’t called it in, and I didn’t tell them about you last time. I followed—” She pointed to the little fluffy creature, currently sitting a few feet away and licking its front paw. “I thought it was abandoned. I didn’t—I didn’t know.”

“It’s not _my_ ship. Does it really look like I’ve been living here for four million stellar cycles?” Blackarachnia huffed, covering relief with indignation. No one knew yet, about the ship or her arrival yet, which meant she could work with this.

The little Autobot straightened up, resting one hand on the wall for support and attempting to square her shoulders. It didn’t really work. She got points for the effort, Blackarachnia supposed, but that frametype was too adorable to be intimidating. _Stop it, Blackarachnia, she might be cute but she’s still the enemy._  “So—if it’s not yours—what are you doing here?”

“I _found_  it, in the course of my own research,” Blackarachnia informed her coolly, wondering even as she said it why she was explaining anything to a potential hostile. “Without the help of a pet, I might add. I see you brought one this time.”

“It’s—Mercury’s not _mine,_ ” the Autobot protested. Blackarachnia concealed a smile.

“You named it, but it’s not yours?”

The tiny Autobot let out a small indignant engine rev. “It’s just—it follows me around. I don’t know why. I didn’t want to just keep calling it “hey-you”. Besides, that’s—that’s not the point!”

Amusing, but not relevant. Blackarachnia switched tactics, leaning against the wall as casually as she could manage. “So you were exploring, with your…not a pet, I suppose. And just happened to stumble across me, again, for the second time in less than a planetary week. That’s starting to look like less and less of a coincidence, you know.”

“It _is_  a coincidence!” The Autobot looked almost offended. “I’m a researcher. A scientist. I’m not _following_  you! What—what would I have to follow, anyway? I don’t even know what you’re doing on this planet! And you wanted me to leave you alone—I did try! I didn’t know you’d be down here.”

“You expect me to believe that an Autobot is going to just pretend I’m not here?” Blackarachnia deliberately stretched her shoulders, allowing her extra limbs to flex in a subtle warning. “Please, I’m not that dense. I have work to do here, and I’m not going to let _you_  get in the way of it.”

“You keep saying _Autobot_  like it’s a bad thing.” The little figure edged back a few steps, wary. Blackarachnia took a step forward to match. _You’re not getting away this time._

“Look, can we start over? My—my name’s Glyph. What’s yours?”

Oh, dear. Was she trying to make _friends_?

“It’s Blackarachnia,” she snapped, trying to hide the hint of confusion that had crept in. “And if you think introducing yourself is going to get you off the hook—”

“No, no—I mean, I think I get it.” Glyph reached down to stroke her tiny canine pet. “You’re—were you a—a Decepticon?”

And there it was. “Took you long enough to figure that out. So let me guess, this is the part where you call your friends and they come running to arrest me.”

Glyph shook her head, almost frantically. “But—the war’s over, isn’t it? Does it really matter now? I mean, if you’re here to do research—you said you were doing work here and found the ship for your own research. The war’s over and they arrested all the important Decepticon commanders or something, right? So if you’re doing research here—it’s a big planet. I can do my research and you can do yours. You don’t need to be arrested.”

Blackarachnia found herself staring blankly at the tiny Autobot before the end of the third sentence. Who could _possibly_  be that naïve? As if everything was forgiven now that the war had ended—

—but if Glyph really was that disconnected from Cybertronian politics, perhaps she could use it. The Autobots she had worked with would never have considered letting a Decepticon go, but from everything Glyph had said, she sounded like a sheltered scientist; perhaps there was room to negotiate instead of killing her. She had to admit, Decepticons aside, killing a tiny fellow scientist with a cute pet didn’t entirely sit well.

Of course, if the negotiations failed, she _was_  still better-armed, larger, and faster. It remained a relevant backup option.

She bit back the reflexive retort and considered her options. “You’re right, of course.” It took some effort to sound resigned rather than sarcastic. “If only it were that simple, but you know, not everyone is quite _ready_  for the war to end. I’m sure you’ve met mechs like that, more interested in blowing things up than learning about them.”

“Well—a few, sure, but they didn’t really go into archaeometry.”

Archaeometry, of course. She hadn’t put much thought into it before, but it would explain the lack of interest in “modern military procedures”, at least. It was a field of study that only just overlapped with her own; perhaps she could be useful, if Blackarachnia played this just right. 

“No, they didn’t. Most of them went into the Elite Guard, or at least the army. They don’t understand the kind of research we do.” That much, at least, was true, though it was stretching it to say that Sentinel or Optimus would understand _any_  research at all. Dense as a block of iridium, the pair of them. “I would have liked to continue my research on Cybertron, but, well, I’d have been arrested by the trigger-happy types. Crashing on this planet was a blessing in disguise.” And if she said it often enough, maybe she’d believe it. “But if you call them in and tell them I’m here…they won’t see the scientist. They’ll only see a Decepticon.”

Sad optics, drawn-in posture. She might not like projecting vulnerability, but she could do it quite well. _Take the bait, little scientist. Come on._

Glyph apparently had, hook, line, and sinker, because those pretty crystal-blue optics had gone wide with concern before Blackarachnia even finished talking. “You really think they would just arrest you? Even if I told them you’re here for research?”

“You didn’t even know about the battle on Earth,” Blackarachnia pointed out, suppressing the smirk that came along with it. “They aren’t going to take your word for it. But…” She broke off there, leaving Glyph to draw the conclusion.

“…Maybe I don’t have to tell them?”

_And done._

No Autobot with any kind of military experience would have gone for that, of course. But Glyph was no soldier. Blackarachnia still wasn’t going to trust her, but that naiveté could prove useful enough in the long run.

“If you could just leave that part out of your report, perhaps we could both…find a way to do our research in peace.”

Subtle? Hardly. Effective? Judging from Glyph’s expression, the hint was working wonders. Blackarachnia tilted her head and tried to look harmless—which was difficult, with her frame, but Glyph didn’t seem to have picked up on the organic half yet, so perhaps it would slide under the radar entirely.

The little scientist seemed to be considering her options. Blackarachnia watched every slight shift in expression, every optic flicker, waiting to see if she would agree, or if she would turn into a loyal Autobot drone at the last second. One never knew.

Then Glyph brightened slightly. “Maybe we could work together? If we’re both exploring the ship anyway—maybe we could both look into it and pool whatever we come up with! By the way, what _do_ you work in, anyway?”

_Oh, scrap._


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is later than usual, y'all! Had to focus my energy elsewhere last week, but we're back up and running again.

Glyph watched Blackarachnia’s back as the much larger figure moved through the ship, seemingly entirely confident even on tilting, dusty metal. Perhaps it was an adaptation from her unusual frametype; from the back, she looked even more organic. Glyph had a strong suspicion that asking about it would go over badly—especially with a truce that was tentative, at best—but she couldn’t help wondering where Blackarachnia came from, and if the frametype was normal there. Did all Decepticons look like that? She had seen pictures of Megatron and some of his top officers, and they hadn’t, but maybe the officers were exceptions.

She still couldn’t quite believe she’d agreed to— _asked to!_ —work with a Decepticon. A Decepticon! It didn’t seem entirely real. Decepticons were practically mystical figures from ancient history, not scientists one might happen to run into on strange new planets. That mess that had ended with the parade had been halfway across the universe, not here in what was almost Cybertronian space.

If the Academy Head knew, she would _definitely_  be recalled home for a stern conversation. It might even mean the end of her job. No, no _might_  about it, it definitely would. She was risking everything, and for what? A partnership she didn’t need—she could do this job herself. She could, no matter how nervous she’d been about it.

But the war was over, and it wasn’t fair to get someone arrested when she wasn’t doing anything wrong, was it? If Blackarachnia just wanted to do her research, it wasn’t right to report her to someone who would lock her up.

If they would. She remembered the heightened security for a few weeks during the Omega Incident, and she’d heard rumors about arrests, but she had never actually seen it happen. It hadn’t had much effect on the research labs, and wouldn’t Autobot Command be too busy with other things to arrest random former-Decepticon scientists? But she had to admit, it didn’t seem _completely_  implausible that some Elite Guard member would overreact.

Besides, with the discovery of the Cybertronian ship, things had changed. If Cybertronians had been here before, this wasn’t just a first analysis after all, even if the Academy didn’t know about that yet. It would take time to reassign a new team to the planet, especially one that specialized in this kind of history. An extra pair of hands could be helpful.

Even if she had to watch her back the whole time.

Mercury whined up at her and headbutted the back of her leg, and she realized that she’d fallen behind. Scratching the little creature briefly behind the ears, she scrambled to catch up, though Blackarachnia’s long stride made that difficult.

“Where did you say you were from again?”

“Cybertron.” It was a short, clipped reply, but it didn’t deter Glyph in the slightest.

“So how did you end up crashing here? And how did you find this ship? Did you know it was here already, or did you just find it today?”

“Do you ever run out of questions?” Blackarachnia stopped so abruptly that Glyph almost ran into her back. “Look at this. What do you make of it?”

Glyph turned her chassis lights on the carved door and the faint gap where it hung open. The seals around the edge seemed to have shriveled and hardened, making them useless for actually keeping the door closed, and the metal itself was warped around the corners. “Could be just wear and tear, maybe the seals drying out, but I think this door was pried open. See the imprints in the top corner? It looks like someone—” Or some _thing_ , but she didn’t want to say that out loud. “—might have bent it back and torn it out of the seals to get it open.”

Blackarachnia pushed the door lightly. It creaked and scraped open a few more inches. “That’s a heavy door. The seal’s not airlock quality, but it would still take a big frame to rip it open once it clamped shut.”

“Or at least a sturdy one.” Glyph examined the string of letters on the wall, and felt her spark drop. “Um.”

“What?” Blackarachnia was still prodding the door, the gap widening slightly each time she pushed it. “There’s a computer console in there. I could—I mean, _we_ could use that. ”

“I—I wouldn’t go in there.” Glyph nervously rubbed at the dusty wall, hoping that maybe dirt had covered up something that would change the symbol’s meaning. Dust motes shimmered through the faint beams of light, but nothing conveniently large fell off the wall, and the carved symbol didn’t change in the slightest. “I don’t think—”

“Don’t tell me you’re already tired of our partnership. This was your idea, remember?” Blackarachnia’s tone took on an edge.

“Nonono, it’s not that. It’s—” Glyph pointed, jabbing a finger at the wall until Blackarachnia looked down. “I mean, I know it’s pretty old—and the color’s worn off—but doesn’t that look like…”

“...the universal quarantine symbol.” Blackarachnia stared at it, then spat something in a dialect Glyph didn’t understand. It sounded like it was probably obscene. “Red X.”

“Maybe it’s…something else? Something related but not actually as bad?” Had she been alone, Glyph probably would have turned and run, but she couldn’t very well do that in front of her new ally. Besides, that would have meant leaving Mercury behind—and if all three of them were this close, they’d already been exposed to whatever was behind the open door.

Blackarachnia stared at her, all four optics blinking. “…You’re a real optimist, aren’t you. What else could it possibly be?”

“…Graffiti?” It was a feeble suggestion, and she knew it, but she crouched to examine the wall more closely anyway. “It looks like someone scratched it into the wall. The writing above it is stamped in, but the X is kind of…wobbly. Like someone did it with a knife.”

Blackarachnia ran one finger along the engraved words and made a noncommittal ‘hm’ sound. “Says ‘containment cell’. Nothing about what it was containing. Typical.”

“On all the research ships I’ve been on, they had temporary plates for labels. Maybe this one…fell off, or something. Or something took it.” Glyph backed carefully away from the door, and almost tripped on Mercury. Blackarachnia snapped out an arm faster than the optic could follow, catching Glyph’s wrist and hauling her back upright in a single movement.

“Watch your step. Where are you going, anyway?”

Glyph stared at the warm, slender fingers wrapped all the way around her wrist, and suddenly found that she had forgotten her own name, what planet she was on, and where she had been going. Blackarachnia had pulled her upright as if she weighed nothing, as casually as if she’d been catching a stray tool that had fallen…

Mercury yipped accusingly, and Glyph jerked herself back to reality, shaking her head and pulling her hand free. “Uh—thanks. Thanks. Shh, hey, Mercury, I didn’t mean to. Come here.”

The little canine sat down just out of reach. She could have sworn it looked smug.

“Where are you _going_?” Blackarachnia repeated impatiently. “We still need to check out that computer equipment.”

“Right—right. I—” Glyph stammered, stumbled over her words, and pointed to the wall. “Quarantine.”

“You’re worried about _that_? Please. This ship’s been here for a few million years. Any airborne toxins would have spread to the rest of the planet and then died off long before we ever got here. And as for live specimens, if it’s organic, it’s dead. If it’s Cybertronian, it’s either in stasis, or it got out a long time ago.” Blackarachnia tapped the torn seal with one claw. “What kind of archaeometrist are you, anyway? Come on, let’s go.”

To her slight annoyance, that all made sense. It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d dealt with before—all her previous sites had been cleared of hazards first. “The kind that doesn’t deal with corpses and quarantines and toxins,” Glyph muttered, just quietly enough that she hoped Blackarachnia would have to strain to hear it. “Ask me about dates.”

“Okay. If dates are your thing, then is this ship from the Great War?”

All right, so her hearing was better than she’d expected. Glyph ducked under Blackarachnia’s arm and looked through the door, chassis lights glinting off old, dusty metal. It was hard to see anything definitive, but at least the console was recognizable. “I think that’s a life-sign monitor, like for a stasis pod, but it’s old. They definitely haven’t used that model since the end of the Great War. I’d need to scan a metal sample to know exactly how old—it might be from before or during the war.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Blackarachnia reached over the top of Glyph’s head and shoved the door all the way open. Metal screeched on metal, dust and metal shards showered down on both of them, and Mercury howled like someone had stomped on its tail. Glyph ducked back and reached for the little canine, which scooted under her arm and glared at the door through narrowed, suspicious golden optics.

“Can’t you keep your pet quiet?” Blackarachnia tapped an impatient foot on the metal floor. Glyph huffed.

“It doesn’t like loud noises.” At least, she assumed that was what had set it off. “Maybe you should have opened the door more quietly.”

“So the noise would last longer? I don’t _think_  so.” Blackarachnia turned and eased her way through the door, red chassis lights throwing an eerie glow over the whole space.

For an instant, Glyph saw the former Decepticon silhouetted in the doorway, surrounded by a faint reddish glow, with a shattered stasis tank in front of her and barely-visible traces of spiderweb cracks running along the back wall, and a shiver ran down her spine. With the ancient monitor just barely visible, and the pre-war writing stamped into the wall, it felt like she was looking at a snapshot of some ancient, primal prehistory.

Then Blackarachnia turned and said, “Well? Samples? You take the monitor, I’ll see what was in that stasis tank,” and the moment passed. Glyph patted Mercury’s soft back fur and straightened up.

“Yeah, I’m coming. Don’t start without me.”

***

Several hours and a few dozen samples later, Blackarachnia had to admit, the tiny Autobot was growing on her.

Not enough that she would feel bad when she inevitably ditched her on this planet and took her research somewhere out of Autobot reach, of course. But if she _had_  to work with a tiny, naïve, irritating optimist, Glyph wasn’t a terrible option. She might be nervous, twitchy, and too chatty for her own good, but when it came to actually getting samples and analyzing the old ship, even Blackarachnia had to admit that she knew what she was doing.

Her pet, however, was quickly becoming Blackarachnia’s least favorite part of this temporary-- _temporary!_ \--partnership. She wasn’t sure what species the little canine was, or even if it was organic or metal, but it did not like her, and the feeling was mutual. Every time she turned around, glowing gold optics were staring at her, and she’d almost tripped on it several times. Despite (mostly-empty) dire threats and gestures, she hadn’t managed to intimidate it away, and Glyph didn’t seem to have much control over it. Every now and then, it would vanish into the dark hallways, but it always returned a few minutes later.

“I’ve got enough,” she announced abruptly, tucking the last of the sample vials (that she’d helped herself to out of Glyph’s kit, because really, she wouldn’t miss a few) into her subspace. “Let’s get out of here. Unless you were planning to stay all night.”

“All night—is it night?” Glyph scrambled out from under the console, covered in gray dust that gave her an odd spectral appearance. “Scrap! I’m supposed to call in—they’re going to wonder where I was.” She brushed frantically at her frame, sending up a dust cloud that made Blackarachnia cough and back away.

“Hey! Do that outside. You’ll choke both of us.”

“What do you mean, I’ll…” Glyph trailed off, and for a single, spark-stopping second, Blackarachnia was sure she was about to ask what that meant. _Stupid, stupid, stupid. Normal Cybertronians don’t choke on a little dust. She’s going to figure out that you’re a—_

“…Do you know the way out of here? To get outside? Because—I followed Mercury down here. I’m not sure I can find my way back.”

Oh.

Blackarachnia resisted the urge to sigh with relief and raised a skeptical brow instead. “You didn’t think to mark the passages? Isn’t that standard Autobot procedure?”

“I—maybe I should have, but look, Mercury moves pretty fast. I couldn’t keep up and mark it.” Glyph stopped and blinked, rubbing dust out of her optics. “How did you know about standard Autobot procedure? I mean, they teach it to all of us, but—were you an Autobot?”

That was dangerous territory. Blackarachnia did not like that one little bit. “I’m a researcher,” she snapped, a little more harshly than necessary. “I learned what I needed to. Know your enemy—that’s the first rule of war. Didn’t they teach you that?”

“Well—I wasn’t exactly _at_  war, you know.” Glyph shifted in place. “But I guess that makes sense. So…do you know the way out? Or should I just…”

Part of her wanted to leave the Autobot to find her own way out. Looking after others was hardly her strong suit, and she hadn’t agreed to become a tour guide. But if she didn’t want Glyph to get suspicious and report a possibly-hostile Decepticon back to the Academy, she was going to have to pretend to be at least a little bit nice.

“I suppose I can show you.” Not back through the cavern with the pool, though. That was _her_  space, and she needed it to conduct the experiments Glyph didn’t need to know about. But there were a few other routes her sensors had picked up that should take them right back to the surface. “I assume you can find your ship from there, once I take you back outside. While we’re on our way, perhaps we can discuss what you’ll be reporting about how you found this ship.” And what she’d found there—though Blackarachnia was fairly sure Glyph would read between those lines.

She did. “Oh—right. Because I can’t mention you. Don’t worry, I promise I won’t. I’ll just tell them that I—I found this ship while exploring, and the basic results that I analyzed. And if you find anything worth reporting from that stasis cell, we’ll—we can decide what to say then. That’ll work, right?”

Blackarachnia ducked under a low-hanging beam from the ship’s ceiling and started toward the exit, concealing a smirk. _If_  she found anything she _wanted_  to report. She would _want_  to report something to Autobot Command when the Pits of Kaon froze over. But that didn’t need to be said out loud. “Of course. What _do_  you expect to find, by the way?” No point waiting to get answers, if she could get a plausible guess on the first round.

“Well, I think the monitor system probably predates the Great War. I mean, I won’t know until I do some analysis, but some of the wiring is a system that they reworked during the war. It could be very early war or a retrofitted ship, of course, I’ll have to do more research, but I think the link between the monitor and the stasis pod is the old system too. Some of the wall connections were intact—I took one of those for review…”

Blackarachnia carefully avoided stepping on the little canine pet and led the way down the hall, paying attention with one audial and focusing most of her processor on filing the information away. Glyph was on a roll now—she wouldn’t stop until they reached the surface, if then. She liked to talk about her work. It could be useful, and more importantly, it would keep her from asking questions.

This wouldn’t last forever, but as long as it did, Blackarachnia would get whatever she could out of it.


	7. Chapter 7

**_Cybertron_ **

“Sentinel, relax. A few Decepticons missing from the roster isn’t the end of the world.” Optimus Prime stepped back toward the door, leaving Sentinel plenty of space to pace the room without hitting someone with the oversized Magnus Hammer. “We have Megatron in custody, Starscream is dead, and I doubt any of them will move without word from their leaders. They’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“That’s easy for _YOU_  to say, _Optimus_ ,” Sentinel snapped, gesturing with the hammer. It bounced off the wall and nearly hit him in the head. “ _YOU_  aren’t responsible for this ENTIRE PLANET while Ultra Magnus is _incapacitated_ , now are you? If we don’t find those Decepticons _now_  and make an example of them, I’ll have OPEN REBELLION on my—”

“I can’t help but notice that you say _we_  when you mean _me and my team_.” Optimus straightened and folded both arms across his chest, ignoring what was probably indignant spluttering at being interrupted. “Look, we’ve been searching the galaxy for Eli— _Blackarachnia_ , and the missing Decepticon squad, for months now. There’s no trace of them. They haven’t come back to Cybertron, and I doubt they’re going to. They know they’re outnumbered. We already plan to expand our search radius. There’s really no need for the lecture on that point.”

“Then why haven’t you already _FOUND THEM_ , Optimus? Why are they still out there threatening _my planet_  while we sit back and insist that there’s no hurry, they’ll turn up eventually? You don’t know that they won’t act without Megatron’s authority—they’ve got other leaders. _We’re_  functioning fine without Ultra Magnus, you know.”

That was…actually a good point. Optimus considered it, tuning out Sentinel’s continuing grumbles in the background. Blackarachnia didn’t seem like the world-domination type, but—if she was still alive—would she be on her way back to Cybertron to continue the war?

  _No, she couldn’t. The Elita I knew would never._

But she _wasn’t_  the Elita he knew anymore.

Still, even on Earth, she really hadn’t been particularly focused on the Decepticon cause. It had been all about purging her organic half, and coming back to Cybertron wouldn’t help with that. If anything, she would likely steer clear.

But the rogue team was a much more serious threat. Strika had been an excellent general during the war—someone who could step into a leadership position if pushed. He had assumed that without anyone to lead them, there would be no push, but maybe Sentinel had a point.

“Listen, we can expand our search radius to include the uninhabited planets and asteroid belts in the Outer Rim area. If they’re hiding out there, we’ll find them. Is that good enough for you?”

The answer was grumbled and noncommittal, but it was as close to a yes as he was going to get.

***

**_Planet 19XJA-145_ **

“Okay, now, hold it still.” Glyph carefully angled the portable scanner down across the broad square of metal, optics fixed on the thin green line. “Steady.”

Blackarachnia huffed, but carefully, so as not to move the metal braced between both hands. “That’s the fourth time you’ve told me. Believe me, I  _know_  how hard these scans are. Just focus on it.” Glyph’s pet stared at her with intense optics from its comfortable position in the far corner, and she glared right back at it. _I know you don’t like me. I don’t like you. Get over it._ Glyph, as usual, missed the entire silent exchange, focusing so intensely on the task at hand that for a rare moment she went completely silent.

The scanner chirped a confirmation, and Glyph beamed, her entire face lighting up. “Got it! You can move now.”

“Hmph.” Blackarachnia let the wall panel drop. It hit the frame behind it with a clang. “Tell me we got an actual number this time.”

Glyph scrolled through the screen. “Density…material makeup…structural analysis…hmm, this part’s in pretty decent shape, so we don’t need to worry about the hallway falling in. No serial number or ID chip.”

Blackarachnia smothered the urge to curse aloud. In three days of research, they had yet to find anything that would identify the ship as Autobot, Decepticon, or predating the conflict altogether.

“Is there _anything_ useful on that scanner? If it’s going to come up empty again we might as well go back to searching the old-fashioned way.”

“Of course there’s useful information. You just aren’t looking.” Glyph held up the screen, pointing to the still-scrolling readouts. “See? If I take this back to my ship, I can run an age analysis and figure out how long the metal’s been around. They used different compounds back before the Great War, so that’ll tell us if the ship was built before or during.”

Blackarachnia huffed. She couldn’t very well announce that she wanted to know faction, too—Glyph would want to know why that mattered, if the war was over and they were on the same side now. “I still think we should be focusing on the containment units. There might be other stasis tanks further down that hall. Just because the first one didn’t leave any CNA traces doesn’t mean the others won’t have something.”

Technically, whatever had broken out of that tank _had_  left traces, but it hadn’t been Cybertronian, and her ship hadn’t been able to identify it. Glyph didn’t need to know about it until Blackarachnia had determined whether or not it could add to _her_  research.

She would need new equipment for that, too. Her shuttle may have saved her life, but it wasn’t a proper research vessel. She didn’t particularly miss her fellow Decepticons, but the _Nemesis_ had been in possession of a lovely science lab, stocked with everything she could possibly want and then some. It would have identified the creature in minutes. Now, she could only dream of having that kind of equipment on-hand.

But perhaps Glyph’s ship would have what she needed, if she could find an excuse to accompany her naïve little research partner home. It was worth giving some thought to.

“We can’t get any further down that hall, remember? Mercury tried it and it’s blocked off solid with rubble. It’d take a construction crew to dig that out.” Glyph went back to her scanner readouts. “Besides, unless you’re hoping to find the actual crew of this ship in stasis pods somewhere down there, I don’t know what you’re thinking you’ll find in a stasis tank that will tell us when this ship arrived here.”

Blackarachnia bit back the first three sarcastic responses that sprang to mind, suspecting that Glyph would not take well to someone questioning why she kept the damn canine around, and settled on, “Well, it’s not like we’re finding much here, are we? I don’t think endlessly scanning pieces of the ship walls is going to bring up anything but dust.”

“…Yeah, maybe,” Glyph admitted. “You got a better idea that doesn’t involve a few weeks’ worth of digging?"

“Actually, _yes._  Because I generally do.” Blackarachnia thought fast to come up with something else. Fighting over the stasis tanks wasn’t worth it yet. “Why not try the outside? The ship isn’t entirely buried, and it might have an ID tag somewhere out there. Besides, it’s so dusty in here I can’t see a thing. Give it some time to settle.”

Glyph blinked, looked around at the dust floating through faint shafts of light, and shrugged. “Sure, why not. Which side do you want to start on?”

“It’s a big ship. Let’s split up and take one side each. I think there’s an exit back this way—I’ll take that one.” _And a scanner._  If she moved fast, maybe she would have time to duck back into her makeshift cavern home and check out that CNA trace, while Glyph was busy on the other side of the ship. “You got another one of those? It’ll be a lot faster if we both work on it.”

“Oh, sure. Uh, hang on.” Glyph rummaged around in her subspace, frowned, and turned her attention to the kit sitting open on the floor. There was a long stretch of slightly awkward silence while she searched through the jumble of tools, and Blackarachnia rolled her optics.

“Here! Here it is. It’s a little older, but I think it’ll still work.”

“You _think_? Didn’t you test your equipment?”

Glyph planted her hands on her hips and pulled herself up to her full (insignificant) height. “The Academy tested it when they supplied my ship, so I assume they did, but I—I don’t test my own equipment. Do you?”

“Oh, for spark’s sake.” Blackarachnia snatched the scanner and flipped the switch. To her relief, it turned on. “Of course I test my own equipment, because I don’t trust anyone else to get it right. What if your Academy buddies ran out of time and didn’t test something essential, huh? You’d be up a dead end with a flat tire. Always test your own equipment, if you want to be sure it’s actually done.”

Glyph blinked at her, wide-eyed and visibly rattled. “But—how do you ever work with a team if you don’t trust anyone else to get their part done right? They wouldn’t skip something essential if they ran out of time, they’d delay the launch.”

“ _Sure_  they would. Because no Autobot has ever cut safety corners before.” Blackarachnia bit down the rising sarcastic rant, noting the slightly wounded look in Glyph’s optics. Wouldn’t do to burn _that_  bridge—not while she still needed it. “No point in fighting about it, I suppose. It works, that’s all that matters. You take the front of the ship—the light’s better out there and there’s room for your, uh, _pet_ —” She waved a hand in the little canine’s general direction. “—to run around, or, you know, do whatever it does. I’ll handle the dark corner. I can see better and push through the rubble. We’ll take a break after we’ve finished checking the outside and have some energon.”

“Oh—okay.” Glyph blinked, and the hurt vanished, replaced by something akin to her usual overbearing cheerfulness. “Yell if you need help!”

“Of course.” _Not._

The little canine stared at her as it rose and padded out of the hallway after Glyph. Blackarachnia stared back.

_Don’t look so smug. It’s not like you can understand me._

And now she was mentally talking to the _pet_. She really needed to get off this planet.

The hidden cavern was blissfully cool and quiet, with no floating dust, chattering companions, or glaring animals. Blackarachnia breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the stone, watching raindrops collect on the grass at the edge of one ceiling crack and slowly drip down to the rocks below. It hadn’t been raining when she had met Glyph that morning before moving underground, but given the amount of water on the cave floor, it must have been a heavy storm. Luckily for them, they’d missed it entirely. It was a relief even if this planet didn’t seem to have an acid rain problem.

_Them? What them? There’s no us here, Blackarachnia. Don’t get attached. She's useful, that's all._

She removed her samples from the battered storage unit she’d salvaged from her ship a few days earlier, and angled the scanner over the first glass shard. There were faint traces of something unidentifiable along the sharp edges, but it was barely detectable even at close range.

“Give me something,” she muttered. Anything would help—a species identification, preferably, and planet of origin, and how long it had been here, but she’d settle for knowing whether it had been organic or mechanical.

The scanner beeped and flashed a few quick codes. ORIGIN: UNKNOWN.

Naturally. Blackarachnia muttered a quiet curse, and waited to see if it would provide anything else. A string of compounds scrolled across the screen—the chemical makeup of the trace, presumably.

Hm. Was that _carbon?_

Organic, then. What had an organic creature been doing on a Cybertronian ship that might or might not predate the Great War? Maybe one of the creatures from this planet had gotten to it—but so far, she’d only seen Glyph’s pet and the static shark, and neither of those seemed obviously organic.

…Unless she’d missed something in the run-in with the shark.

Blackarachnia rose, turned her chassis lights to maximum, and made her way toward the pool in the center of the cavern, hoping for a distinct shadow in the mud. There was nothing, but to her alarm, she noted that the water had risen considerably despite no obvious point of input. The underground stream must draw from something outdoor that was rapidly filling up with rainwater.

That could be a problem. That could be a _huge_  problem. If the cavern flooded…

Well, if the cavern flooded, it wasn’t going to do it in seconds. She had time to remove herself and her samples well before the water level could rise that high—and even if it did, her initial search hadn’t shown water marks all the way up to the walls. There was a good ten yards of rock that clearly never went underwater.

It was still an unsettling thought, especially in the dark with the sound of rain falling in the background, but Blackarachnia squared her shoulders and forced herself to keep moving forward, grimacing at the feeling of mud sliding under her feet. It was treacherously slick, and getting deeper with each step; she wouldn’t be able to get very close to the pool without getting wet.

Well, _wetter_ , she thought with a wince, wiping traces of condensation off her face. The cavern was nice and cool, but the rain dripping in made it horribly humid. She hated appreciating any part of her hybrid form, but the spider half was handling the moisture far better than her Cybertronian half ever had.

The shark was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t a surprise. Static sharks blended in well with their environment, and if they weren’t moving, they were almost impossible to locate, especially in the dark. The damp, dark cavern environment was perfect for them. If one had been regularly hunting in this pool before, it would come back. Blackarachnia studied the water closely, watching for the telltale stripes to flicker against the dark liquid.

Nothing. After several minutes of circling the pool and peering into the water, she hadn’t seen a single twitch or flicker to indicate there was a fish somewhere down there.

Perhaps she would get more out of the samples. After all, she couldn’t demand that a shark show up on time. That had always been the problem working with living creatures—they were never _consistent,_  and that made her results imprecise. Maybe static sharks didn’t do well with rain. Maybe it was hunting outside. Maybe this wasn’t its normal hunting ground at all, and she’d just happened to run across it the _one_  time it had ventured underground. There was no way to know.

Suddenly, water lapped up against her ankles, and she jumped back in alarm, cursing. The pool had risen much faster than she’d expected, and she was standing in water and deep mud now. It took some effort to jerk one foot free, and by the time she’d taken a step back, the water had risen even further.

That was when the electricity hit.

She barely saw the shark, diving straight down into the pool and vanishing into the depths, but she felt its tail wrap around her ankle for a split second, yanking her off-balance and down onto one knee. The jolt of electricity that followed instantly froze her entire frame in place, leaving her helpless to stop her fall forward and straight into icy water that her organic frame was not, and had never been, equipped to handle.


	8. Chapter 8

The ship’s exterior was just as frustratingly cryptic as its interior. Glyph scanned every sheet of metal, sometimes two or three times, and frequently stopped to polish dirt and grit off the metal in the hopes that something would be painted underneath. Sometimes she found color changes—the ship had apparently been a very pretty silver-and-cream combination, at one point—but if the original owners had painted the name on the outside, it had either been worn off or was somewhere under the buried sections.

Mercury trotted along in her wake for a while, occasionally disappearing under the ship to examine things that Glyph couldn’t see. Once, it returned with what looked like an organic glitchmouse in its mouth, sat down at her feet, and dropped the glitchmouse—which promptly scuttled off into the shadows, leaving the canine looking slightly crestfallen.

“It’s okay.” She tried to hide her smile and patted its head reassuringly. “I’ve got plenty of energon, but thanks anyway.”

Golden optics blinked up at her before Mercury nudged her hand for more pats.

“Sorry. I gotta keep scanning these. I bet Blackarachnia’s already done with her side.” Now that she thought about it, that was odd. Where _was_ Blackarachnia? “Hey, see if you can find her. I hope everything’s okay.”

Mercury blinked up at her, and she sighed. The little canine seemed friendly, but it wasn’t at all good at taking orders. Apparently bringing her to the ship had been a one-off, because so far it hadn’t even managed to lead her back to where she’d left a few tools that day.

“Find Blackarachnia. Go on, you can do it!”

Mercury stared blankly at her for a moment before swishing its tail and padding off back into the ship. Glyph was not confident at all that it knew what it was doing—it was probably looking for more glitchmice, not her missing partner.

_Oh well._  Blackarachnia would find her when she was ready. The strange Decepticon seemed much better at navigating the tunnels than Glyph ever would be, and had a rather unsettling tendency to appear out of nowhere.

Halfway down the next panel, which was half-buried in the dirt, the scanner beeped a confirmation.

Hardly daring to hope, Glyph leaned in close to the screen, trying to make sure she’d read it correctly. Was that…?

“We got a name! Blackarachnia, Mercury, we got a name!” Clutching the scanner, Glyph sprinted back into the ship, light flashing and reflecting off the walls. Where was that exit? She couldn’t remember where exactly Blackarachnia had gone, though her second exit had to be somewhere around their first work site. “We got a name! Blackarachnia? Where are you? We got a name!”

From somewhere on the other side of the ship, an eerie drawn-out yowl echoed through the corridors. It sounded like Mercury, but she’d never heard the canine make that noise before, like—

—like a wounded, or frightened, animal.

Abandoning her search for Blackarachnia, Glyph dropped the scanner and ran, trying to follow the sound through the hallways. It seemed like it took hours, echoes tricking her into dead ends and tangled corridors, but her chronometer told her it had only been about forty-five seconds when she ran headlong into a narrow hallway where part of the wall had been pried back, opening into a dark, damp cavern. Without hesitating, Glyph squeezed through the crack and switched her chassis lights to maximum, frantically scanning the room. “Mercury? Mercury!”

Her pet came bounding toward her, yelping frantically, but didn’t come close enough for her to catch and examine it. Instead, it went sprinting back toward the rapidly rising pool in the center of the room, where something was thrashing around, fixed only by what looked like claws driven into the ground. Glyph’s lights flashed across dark plating, broken up with gold patterns.

“Blackarachnia!”

Without thinking, she flung herself across the room toward the pool, splashing straight into the shallows.

******

Water. Primus-damned _water._  If Blackarachnia got out of this alive, she was going to move to the nearest desert planet and never set foot anywhere near water again.

Her claws sank deep into the ground at the flooded pool’s edge, holding her in place, but she couldn’t get enough leverage to haul herself out of the swirling flood. The ground was too soft, and every time she tried to lift herself, her claws dug in too deep and slid straight through the soft ground, putting too much pressure on the fragile handhold. It was only through pure luck that she hadn’t already lost her grip; she’d had a slight foothold for a few seconds, but had lost it in an instant when she slid backward, and she couldn’t find another gap in the slippery, muddy pool walls. Her free hand couldn’t find another place to grip, no matter how hard she tried—there was too much water, too much mud, and she wasn’t at the right angle to get a grip on solid rock.

_Stupid. STUPID organic frame1_  This wouldn’t have happened to any other Decepticon—or to her, if she’d still been fully mechanical. She could have let the flood sweep her under, braced herself further down, and climbed back out once the flooding died—or she could have gone all the way down to explore the bottom, and see where that shark had come from. It could have been _useful_. It could have solved all her research problems, if her hypothesis had been right.

But no. No, she was stuck with a frame that couldn’t handle the pressure or the lack of oxygen, and if she drowned here it would be her own damn fault for not watching her step, _and_  Optimus’s for leaving her to the spiders, _and_  Sentinel’s for dragging them to that cursed planet in the first place, and—

Cursing—mostly internally, after the first time she’d yelled aloud and gotten a mouthful of cold salty water—she fought to drag herself a little higher, not enough to get out, just enough to aim her spider silk at the stalactites on the far side of the cavern. That would be enough to let her pull herself out—but she couldn’t stay still enough, and her first shot had missed _and_  nearly caused her to slip. There was too much happening, and with water in her optics and the flood trying to drag her down, it was all she could do to see.

Then she heard Glyph’s pet start yowling only a few yards away like someone had stomped on its paw, and wondered if Primus or Unicron or whatever deity was out there had decided that not only was she going to die, but her last moments would be humiliating and _annoying_  on top of it all. What was _wrong_  with that thing now?

She shrieked an incoherent string of curses at the creature, clamping her other hand into the stone below the water’s surface and trying to push herself up that way. It didn’t do much, though it stabilized her position slightly.

“Blackarachnia! Are you okay? What happened? Are you all right?”

Ah.

Of course Glyph was here. Because her entire damn life was cursed, and why _wouldn’t_  someone be around to watch her embarrassingly stupid demise?

“Do I _look_  all right?” It came out as a high-pitched screech. “What do you _think_  happened?"

Glyph ran straight into the water, splashing water everywhere in a fine mist that nearly blinded Blackarachnia. “ _Stop that!_  You’ll drown me! What do you think you’re doing?”

Of course _she_  could run straight into the water. There was nothing to stop  _her_ , a perfectly normal Cybertronian who didn’t have to worry about temperature, or oxygen, or pressure, or, or, or—

_Cursed organic frame._

If she let herself keep going down that route, she was going to cry from sheer frustration, and this was  _entirely_  bad enough without that, even if a few tears might go unnoticed when she'd  _l_ _ost her grip and drowned._

Glyph was chattering away at her, apologizing or maybe asking for an explanation, she didn’t care to try to listen and couldn’t hear much anyway with the water rushing around her frame too close to her audials. “Will you just—” Water splashed her in the face and went straight down her throat, leaving her coughing and choking. “Either help me, or _go away!"_

Glyph dropped to a knee in the water, and suddenly there was a hand firmly clamped over Blackarachnia’s wrist, holding on grimly despite the weight difference. Glyph was stronger than she looked, apparently.

“Why can’t you just let go?” Glyph might have been yelling, or maybe it just sounded like yelling. “Let go! It’s a flash flood, I think—it’ll drain through and you can climb back up afterward—”

“ _No I can’t!_ ” Blackarachnia shrieked, trying to use Glyph’s arm as leverage and failing. The little Autobot was just too small—she could keep Blackarachnia upright, but she’d never be able to pull her out unless Blackarachnia could get some of her own leverage. “If that worked I’d _do it!_  Don’t just _s_ _tand there_ — _"_

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Glyph hung on, so tight her little blunt fingertips dug into Blackarachnia’s wrist and would probably leave dents, but didn’t move. “I can’t pull you out! Look, I’ve done this before, it’ll work, I know it will! There’s nothing to be scared of!”

“I’m not _scared!_ ” That was the most blatant lie she’d ever told, and the fact that she was shrieking it at the top of her vocalizer probably didn’t help. Water splashed into her face again, threatening to choke her. “Just—” An idea occurred to her, a moment too late. “Stay there. Stay right there! Do _not_ move, do you hear me?”

Glyph wasn’t big enough to lift her—but she might provide decent leverage, under the right conditions.

“I won’t! I won’t.” The expression on Glyph’s face, as best as she could see through salt-blurred optics, was grimly determined. It looked odd on someone so tiny and nonthreatening.

Blackarachnia could only hope her actions would back it up.

She braced herself against Glyph’s arm, tried very hard not to think about the possibility that if she missed she would lose her hold entirely, and fired a sturdy strand of silk across the room to the closest outcrop. The ground under her claws gave way, leaving her hanging from the tiny Autobot’s arm for a terrifying second—

—and just as she grabbed for Glyph’s arm with her free hand, panic overwhelming conscious thought, the silk connected with its target, stretching across the room in a glittering line of purple. For an instant, she wondered if it would fail her now—why not? Clearly the rest of her frame already had—but it held, and so did the rock it was attached to. 

Glyph clung on, wide-eyed. To Blackarachnia’s surprise, she hadn’t slipped in the mud yet. “I got you! Go ahead and—and grab it. I—I think I got you. I got it.”

That wasn’t very reassuring. Blackarachnia grabbed the lifeline, which suddenly felt terribly fragile under her claws, and wrenched herself upright. The water seemed to drag at her like a living thing, pulling her down and forcing both of them to struggle against it, hand in hand—

Then she was free, pulling herself out of the water and mud along the line until she hit solid ground and could half-stumble, half-drag herself up onto wet rock. Coughing, she scrubbed the back of a hand roughly across her face, trying to clear her optics enough to see clearly. Her spark was _racing,_  pulsing far too fast, and she wondered for a second if she was going to black out, start crying, or otherwise end up curled up on the floor shaking.

Too close. That had been _too damn close._  This planet was _worse than Earth._

And Glyph had seen the whole thing.

Dread sunk into her spark. Glyph couldn’t possibly fail to miss the part where she couldn’t survive underwater. She would _know_  that there was something different about Blackarachnia’s frame, and once she did?

Blackarachnia knew what kind of reactions to expect. She’d seen them all. And once Glyph ran back to her ship to report the terrifying half-organic abomination she’d mysteriously encountered on their planet, there would be no way to avoid the Autobots coming after her.

She didn’t particularly want to kill the little Autobot. She’d proven to be almost  _likable_  after a week or two of working with her, and when she didn’t call in, the Academy would surely send out a search party.

But she might not have any other choice. _Don’t get attached. Don’t panic. Calm. Calm. You need to survive. That’s what’s important. If you have to take out one little Autobot, it’s not like that’s hard._

She hauled herself upright, shoulders squared, every limb tensed for action, and turned to face Glyph.

The little Autobot had moved in startlingly close, almost within arm’s reach. That in and of itself was alarming—Blackarachnia must have been so rattled she hadn’t heard her coming. That was a _problem._

“Are you okay?” Glyph’s voice quivered a little. “That—that could’ve been really bad. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Huh.

“No.” Her voice sounded harsh and ragged, the unfortunate aftereffect of shouting with a mouthful of salt water. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You can—it’s okay to sit down for a minute. If you need to.” Glyph held out a hand, and Blackarachnia jerked away sharply.

“Don’t _touch_  me. I said I’m fine.”

From the other side of the pool, Glyph’s pet started yipping, and Blackarachnia glared. “Can’t you shut that thing up?”

“Hey, be nice. It got my attention when it saw you were in trouble,” Glyph protested. Blackarachnia snorted.

“Be nice? Because it made a racket? I would have gotten myself out. Look, it was nice of you to show up and all, but I had it handled.”

  _Don’t show anything. Maybe she won’t mention it. Maybe you can lie your way out of this one._

“Oh, come on. You did not.” Glyph folded her arms across her chest and stood tall, which would have been more impressive if she hadn’t barely come up to Blackarachnia’s chest. “I get that you’re freaked out, okay? But the least you could do is say thank you instead of yelling at us. Mercury didn’t want you to get hurt, and neither did I, and both of us showed up when you were in trouble and you didn’t even have to call us.”

Blackarachnia huffed and turned away, severing the lifeline from the rock with a sharp swipe of her claws. The silk coiled on the floor like some strange glittery purple serpent, seeming to take on a life of its own in the dim light from overhead. It looked wrong compared to the mechanical equipment on the far side of the lab. It looked _organic_. “I didn’t ask for your help. You asked for mine, remember?"

“I know you didn’t ask. That’s the point. We’re _partners_ , right? Research partners? You don’t have to ask. Of course we’re going to help you.” Glyph sounded genuinely sincere, but Blackarachnia wasn’t sure she was buying it. “Look, I get what’s going on here, okay? You don’t have to admit it, but I know. It’s fine.”

Blackarachnia spun sharply on a heel. “You _know_?”

_Here we go._

“That you’re scared of water? I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”

Blackarachnia practically _felt_  her processor spin to a grinding halt.

Scared. Of water.

Not a cover story she would have thought to use, but if it worked…

“…You noticed.” She tried not to sound relieved.

“Well…yeah.” Glyph shrugged and smiled ruefully. “You’re not subtle. But it’s okay.”

“Really?” Blackarachnia tried to sound sincere, like someone who was scared of water, a little embarrassed about it, and absolutely not any kind of half-organic creature whatsoever.

“Of course. We’ll just avoid the water.” Glyph retrieved her scanner from where she must have tossed it before running into the flooding pool. “I mean…I guess it makes sense.”

“It does?” That was news to Blackarachnia.

“Well, yeah. You’re…I mean, you’re not entirely mechanical, right? You’re some type of organic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if the double-record-scratch last few paragraphs are funny to anybody but me, but I thought it was hilarious, so. Another cliffhanger. Sorryish. I'll try not to leave it hanging quite so long this time!


	9. Chapter 9

The sound of water splashing and dripping seemed terrifyingly loud in the silence that followed Glyph’s words.

Blackarachnia drew herself up to her full height, extra limbs drawn in close to her frame, and suddenly Glyph remembered that no matter how much time they’d spent together researching, no matter how much of a friendship they seemed to be developing, Blackarachnia was a _Decepticon._

A terrifying, fully combat-trained, lethally skilled Decepticon, of unknown organic origin, and Glyph was standing within easy reach.

Instinctively, the small Autobot took a step back and swallowed hard. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought up the organic thing after all.

It hadn’t been hard to spot. There were little things that didn’t add up—the unusual frametype that she couldn’t identify, and the fact that Blackarachnia never seemed to switch to alt-mode even when it seemed like it might have been convenient. Her comments about breathing, about dust, all things she’d heard organics had trouble with—and then the water. That had confirmed it. Blackarachnia wasn’t Cybertronian.

Crimson optics glittered ominously as Blackarachnia took a step forward. Glyph took another step back. “So you figured it out.” Her tone was a flat hiss. “Took you long enough.”

The tone, more than the words, sent a shudder down Glyph’s spine. “I—I—”

What could she say? She’d hoped that once she’d said it, Blackarachnia would relax, now that she didn’t have to hide it. Of course she didn’t want to admit it up-front. Glyph couldn’t really blame her for that. She’d heard the legends too—that organics were contagious, toxic, the monsters lurking in dark caves and around shadowy corners, stories told in whispers in the dorms at night and issued as dire warnings to protoforms who tried to sneak into places they shouldn’t be. _Organic_  was all but a curse word, in some places on Cybertron.

But those were all protoform stories, topics for bad holofilms and long nights in space with tiny research crews. Glyph might not have much experience outside the lab, but she knew it was all exaggerated. She’d assumed everyone else did, too—that no one could do any kind of in-depth historical research and not realize that there had never been some great attempted organic invasion of Cybertron, or whatever the stories claimed.

Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe Blackarachnia had good reason to assume she would freak out.

Or maybe the stories weren’t exaggeration.

(No, no, of course they were. That was absurd.)

“Now what, Autobot?” The last word had a bite to it. “You run back to your ship and tell your _officers_  all about the organic freak you met? I don’t _think_  so.”

_Oh Primus, she’s going to kill me._  “Wait—wait a second. Wait.” Glyph held up her hands, partly to emphasize that she was unarmed, partly to shield herself from the attack she half-expected to come any second. “Wait, I can—I didn’t mean—”

“You can keep a secret, is that where this is going? You won’t tell anyone if I just let you live? I’ve heard it all before, and trust me, it’s not any more convincing this time.”

“No! I mean, yes—I mean—” Glyph swallowed hard and took another step back. “Listen, can—can we just—talk about this for a minute? I might have—I might have reported you at first—” It was unfortunately true. Decepticon _plus_  organic might have been too much. “—but I’m not going to now.”

“Why should I believe that?” Blackarachnia loomed over her, tall and terrifying and strangely beautiful in the eerie dim light. “Your kind have made me promises before, and broken them _all_ as soon as it was convenient. You may be naïve, but you’re no different.”

“When—when you say _my kind._  Autobots, or…or Cybertronians?”

It slipped out before Glyph could stop herself, and she realized it was a mistake even before she saw Blackarachnia’s four optics narrow. She took another stumbling step back, and froze when a foot slipped in the mud, realizing that the pool was only a few feet behind her.

She wasn’t trained for this. She had no combat skills, no way to fight her way out of this situation. She’d never thought it would come up.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Blackarachnia stayed where she was, at the very edge of the wet ground. “Any more than I would believe _you_.”

“I would! I would believe you!” It was the truth, if only she could make it convincing. “Because you’re—you’re my _friend!_ ”

Blackarachnia laughed. It was cold and harsh and entirely humorless. “We’re friends? You’ve known me for a whole week, told me all about yourself and learned nothing about me, and you think we’re _friends?_  Isn’t that a little optimistic?”

“I did learn things about you.” It was hard to get the words out. Glyph forced herself to anyway. As long as Blackarachnia was talking, she wasn’t attacking, and if she could just keep that going, maybe things would deescalate. “I know that you’re smart, and that you’re a good scientist.” That got another harsh laugh; Glyph stubbornly kept going. “I know you’re—you’re not as scary as you try to act. I know you could have killed me and you didn’t.” Admittedly, that was more wishful thinking than anything else at this point. “I know you value research and you love it, no matter how much you try to act like you don’t care about it. I’ve _seen_  you light up when you find something new.”

“Like that matters. Don’t tell me you’re trying the _I know there’s still good in you_  spiel,” Blackarachnia spat. “As if I’ll change all my ways if only you can convince me I really _want_  to. I don’t _care_  about good and evil. I care about _survival._  I let you live because I thought you might be _useful_ , and nothing more.”

That stung. Did Blackarachnia really think _that_  little of Glyph? She was right that they didn’t know each other well, but surely if they’d worked together, the respect hadn’t gone all one way.

…No, that was perfectly possible. You could work with someone and not like them even a little bit. Hadn’t she learned anything from Academy drama? Plenty of her classmates had spent days working side-by-side and nights complaining about each other over drinks.

…But nobody had gotten killed over Academy drama. Having a Decepticon hate you was different.

“I’m not—I don’t think this is a—a good and evil thing.” Glyph stumbled over her words, making up her argument as she went. “I think—I think that you still think I’m useful. Otherwise you would have killed me already. This—this doesn’t have to change anything. We can still work together. I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t—it doesn’t matter to me if you’re organic. Not under the circumstances.”

For the first time in the conversation, Blackarachnia didn’t respond, optics locked on Glyph as if trying to stare straight through the smaller mech’s processor. There was a moment of awful, chilling silence, and Glyph realized that it must have stopped raining, because there was no more water dripping through the cracks in the ceiling.

“There is no _if_  about it,” Blackarachnia finally hissed, though Glyph thought she detected what might have been a quiver underlying the words. “I _am_. Look at me— _look at me_ , and then tell me you still think we can work together like old Academy buddies. _I’m not like you._ ” Sharp claws stabbed toward Glyph in a gesture that made the smaller mech flinch, even though she was well out of reach now. “Go ahead. _Look."_

Glyph swallowed hard and forced herself to tear her gaze away from Blackarachnia’s optics to look the Decepticon over. It seemed horribly rude, like a deliberate challenge to Blackarachnia, but refusing seemed like a challenge too.

Now that she knew what she was looking for, the curves and spines were clearly organic, but most of Blackarachnia’s frame wasn’t far off from what she would expect of a Cybertronian body-type. Black and purple and gold plating overlapped so much she couldn’t find transformation seams, but the extra limbs seemed to have nowhere to go and no obvious purpose. She knew a set of alt-mode components when she saw them, even if she couldn’t identify what organic creature they attached to.

This was _insane._ If Tap Out knew what she was doing, he would have shown up on Planet 19XJA-145 all on his own, spaceship or no spaceship, to bring her back to the safety of her lab in  Iacon. She had to admit, safety sounded appealing just then, with Blackarachnia looming ominously over her.

But not quite appealing enough to drown out the fascinating element of those organic components. Glyph was no mechanobiologist, but she couldn’t deny that she was curious. Where was Blackarachnia really from? What _was_  she, and how had she become a Decepticon? How much of her frame was organic?

Her optics flicked past Blackarachnia to the strange sparkly purple cabling, which was still coiled on the floor where Blackarachnia had abandoned it after pulling herself free of the pool. Whenever Glyph moved, her chassis lights reflected off the mystery material, giving it a slight iridescent sheen; it looked so soft, almost delicate, but she knew from her one experience with it that it was _unbreakable._

Pretty, mysterious, dangerous. Just like Blackarachnia.

“You want to take a picture while you’re at it?” Blackarachnia’s voice was icily dismissive. “I think you’ve got the idea. You can stop staring now.”

Glyph jerked back, gulped in a startled vent, and forced herself to square her shoulders and make optic contact again. “Sorry. It’s—I didn’t mean to offend you.” Pointing out that Blackarachnia had _told_  her to look seemed counterproductive. “Can I ask—I—I don’t recognize your alt-mode.”

“Of course you don’t. What makes you think that’s any of your business?” Blackarachnia turned away and strode across the room to a small pile of equipment, each step too precise to be casual. It was deliberate, as if she was waiting to see what Glyph would do if she left the path to the doorway clear.

For a second, Glyph thought about running, and then concluded that she wouldn’t get more than a few steps. Blackarachnia had every reason to make sure Glyph did not leave the cavern alive. She wouldn’t give her a real chance to run. Talking was still her best—maybe only—chance to calm this down. So far it seemed to be working.

She took a deep, shaky vent. In, out. In, out. “It’s not, but I’m a researcher. I—I’m curious. You would be too—you know you would. And I’m your friend, even if you’re not mine. You said I didn’t know anything about you, and maybe I should have asked earlier, but…at least I’m asking now.”

“And you think I’m going to be your friend if I open up and _share_  with you, is that it?” Blackarachnia could put more mockery into a single sentence than anyone else Glyph had ever met. “Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t plan to be anyone’s study subject, and you can forget about making a new best buddy. I don’t _do_  friends.”

“Why not? Is it because you’re a—because of where you’re from?” Glyph offered hesitantly. Blackarachnia whirled, brilliant red optics glittering with anger.

“I’m from _Cybertron,_ ” she spat, shoulder limbs flaring up and back. “Or I was, before they _abandoned_  me. So yes, I suppose, where I come from friendship means _nothing_.”

Glyph realized her knees were shaking, and took a careful step forward away from the water now that Blackarachnia was no longer within arm’s reach. The cavern suddenly seemed too small and too damp, and the temperature sent a shiver down her spine. She wanted _out_ , even if—or maybe because—it seemed unlikely she would get out of the caves for a while.

“I…actually, I meant the Decepticons. But Cybertron doesn’t have any organics. How—”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Blackarachnia snarled. “Why do you think I’ve never gone back? Because if I set foot on Cybertron, your _precious_  Autobot commanders would have me on a lab table for dissection before I had time to scream. Cybertron doesn’t have any organics because people like me aren’t supposed to exist. I was left for _dead_  to cover up someone else’s mistake, and I hear he’s running the planet now."

Oh.

Glyph wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. There was a story there, she knew it, but so far asking questions wasn’t working out in her favor. Was there _any_  acceptable response to something like that? Apologies seemed likely to make Blackarachnia angrier. So did protests. Asking who she was talking about also seemed like a bad idea.

“I…listen, I didn’t mean…” She swallowed and tried again, carefully edging her way over to the wall, where the ground was stable and it was slightly less damp. “I want to understand. I didn’t realize it would be—I thought that if I told you I knew, it would help. Obviously that hypothesis was wrong.”

“Figure that out all by yourself, did you?” Blackarachnia turned away again and started sorting through her equipment, some of which Glyph recognized, some of which Glyph didn’t.

“Yes.” Glyph tried not to grimace at the sarcasm, and suspected she had failed. “I like you, whether you believe it or not. I…I want to know what your story is.”

“You mean you want to get out of here alive, and you think keeping me talking is a good way to do that.” Blackarachnia turned a scanner over, looking at it instead of Glyph, though Glyph suspected that if she moved, Blackarachnia’s full attention would be immediately back on her. “Points for making the pretense convincing, I suppose.”

“It’s not _pretending_ ,” Glyph protested, though she couldn’t argue with the rest of it. She wasn’t particularly subtle. But Blackarachnia hadn’t killed her yet, even though she knew what Glyph was doing, and that gave her a faint ray of hope.

“I really do want to understand.” Or at least, she was overwhelmingly curious, despite the knot of fear in her spark and the tremble in every cable. “Whatever you have to say, I’ll listen. Look, we…we both know you’re not planning to let me leave here until you’re convinced I’m not going to tell anyone, whatever…whatever that ends up meaning. If you’re going to kill me, it won’t matter if you tell me your story first.”

Blackarachnia snorted, but waved a hand at the wall in a gesture that might have meant “sit down”. (Or it might have been obscene. Glyph wasn’t quite sure, and sat down anyway. It was a relief from trying to hide shaking knees.)

“You aren’t going to shut up until I tell you, so you might as well know. Every Autobot deserves to know what kind of traitors they signed on to follow.”

  _I didn’t sign on to anything,_  Glyph thought, and kept it to herself.

“Half a million stellar cycles ago, I was just like you. Loyal. Enthusiastic. Just graduated the Academy, and got accepted into Elite Guard training.” Blackarachnia ran long, slender claws over the edges of the scanner, optics staring past Glyph and through the wall. “I had friends. I had plans. I had a  _life._  And then my best friend suggested an unauthorized field trip to an organic planet.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, this took a while. Sorry, y'all! Life happened.
> 
> I've made a few minor changes to canon events in this chapter--partly because it flowed better that way, and partly because I didn't have the DVD for a couple weeks and tried to write it from memory.

**_Several Thousand Stellar Cycles Ago_ **

The first thing Elita-1 noticed about Archa Seven was the silence.

On Cybertron, the streets hummed with activity at all hours of the day and night, shuttles rumbling by overhead, vehicles rushing past, and announcements, comm calls, holovid screens on every corner. It was possible to find a quieter place, if you really wanted one, but there was no such thing as a soundless space in Iacon, and probably nowhere on Cybertron.

But Archa Seven’s atmosphere was utterly silent, and on the planet’s surface, the quiet was broken only by the whistle of wind through towering rock formations.

The second thing she noticed was the shimmering purple mesh. It linked the rock formations together like the skywalk networks in Vos that let groundbound bots explore the towers; had the organics on this planet built something similar? If there _were_ any organics, anyway. It certainly didn’t feel like an inhabited planet.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she commented, noting that Optimus’s gaze had wandered in the same direction.

“Yeah. What do you think it is?”

Elita thought about all the options, and concluded that it couldn’t be a skywalk—it didn’t look sturdy enough. “I have no idea.”

Sunlight beat down on stone, turning the air hot and dry. Judging from the lack of any kind of organic growth, there wasn’t much water on the planet—possibly none at all. The lack of sound made it feel desolate, almost _dead._  As if no life had ever existed on this planet.

But, of course, it had. There were Cybertronian records of ships landing here, back in the Golden Age and during the Great War. What horrible fate had those ships met in such an unwelcoming climate?

It sent a little thrill of excitement down Elita-1’s spine. An _organic planet!_ She could only imagine what they might find—ancient ships, maybe, or records, or weapons, or at least some kind of archaeological sign of what Cybertronians had done on this planet back before travel here had been forbidden. The potential contribution to Cybertronian history alone was unfathomable. Whatever she brought back could change the course of historical research—and no one could argue that she shouldn’t have gone when the results were so clearly beneficial to Cybertron. She could get her work in the holojournals, maybe even fast-track to the Elite Guard research division at the end of her training…

Her daydreams were abruptly interrupted by the _crash_  of the ship’s hatch dramatically slamming shut. Ah, Sentinel. Incapable of anything less than a dramatic entrance.

“Optimus! Elita-1! Get your fanbelts in gear!”

***

**_Present_ **

“You worked with _Sentinel Magnus?”_ Glyph’s optics went wide—well, wider than they usually were—with what might have been awe or disbelief, it was hard to tell in the dim light, and Blackarachnia didn’t care anyway.

She was too busy being stunned speechless, though it lasted only a few seconds.

“They made him _what!_? Which datapad-pushing gearshaft thought _that_  was a good idea? Don’t tell me, _Optimus_  had something to do with this. That bleeding-sparked idiot. Sentinel’s not qualified to be in charge of a fishbowl, let alone the _planet_!"

“They—well—he’s—” Glyph stammered helplessly. Judging from past discussions, she probably had no _idea_  whose idea it had been or why _,_ Blackarachnia thought dryly. Given how obsessed with her work she seemed to be, it was a wonder Glyph knew who the current Magnus _was._ “I mean—I mean, it’s only an—an acting position. Temporary. He’s acting Magnus. Until Ultra Magnus—you know, if he wakes up. What’s a fishbowl?”

“Something Sentinel whateverhistitleisnow isn’t _qualified to be in charge of_ ,” Blackarachnia snapped. Once she’d said it out loud, it didn’t sound nearly as dignified as she wanted, and she huffed and turned away. “You’re the one who wanted to hear the story, so shut up and let me tell it.”

Glyph fell silent, either intimidated into it or too curious to waste time on questions, and Blackarachnia turned her attention back to the task of recalling a day she would have liked to forget.

It would have been _easier_ to just kill the Autobot, she thought with an internal curse. But no. No, she couldn’t bring herself to do it on the spot, and now—

Well, she’d come this far, and she was going to remember that awful day whether she liked it or not. She might as well finish the story.

***

“Look at that—it’s not energon.” Elita-1 knelt to examine a tiny puddle of some unidentifiable purplish liquid, studying it as best she could without touching it. It was almost the same shade as the purple mesh she’d seen above ground—a little darker, maybe, though the dim light of the underground tunnels made it hard to tell. She should have thought to bring some bioscanning tools, she mused—though it would have delayed their trip an extra hour, and they probably wouldn’t have made it off-planet without getting caught. “What do you think it is?”

“I dunno. I wouldn’t touch it, if I were you.” Optimus stood a few feet back, eyeing the puddle warily. “Remember those stories Kup used to tell about organics with acid skin that could fry your plating off?”

“Don’t tell me you believe those,” Sentinel sneered. “Those stories are meant to scare protoforms. None of it’s real. Anyway, why are we wasting time looking at disgusting puddles when we should be tracking down energon?”

Elita-1 rolled her optics. “Fine, fine. Killjoy. What if this is a new scientific discovery and you brushed it off because you were too busy yelling about energon and riches or whatever it is you’re here for?”

“I didn’t come here for _science,_ ” Sentinel snorted. “This little expedition was supposed to find the greatest stash of energon ever recorded, remember?”

“No, but I remember you insisting over and over that there just _had_  to be energon on this planet.” Elita-1 rolled her optics and accepted Optimus’s offered hand, pulling herself upright in a single quick movement. “Fine, we’ll go look for a Decepticon ship instead of the mysterious organic substance that could be the discovery of the century, because you have a one-track processor. Wasn’t this supposed to be a dry planet?" 

Three ominous passages loomed up ahead, branching off from the primary tunnel. All of them seemed exactly like the tunnels they’d followed so far: dark, slightly damp, with the occasional faint breeze brushing along their plating from what must have been vents in the ceiling high above. So far, there had been no signs of life.

Elita-1 shivered with excitement. An abandoned organic planet with completely new substances not recorded in any of the existing datalogs? _Discovery of the century_  was an understatement. It was almost enough to make her forget that the tunnel roof collapse meant they were technically trapped.

“Yeah, it was supposed to be, but it’s organic. Who knows what “dry planet” means in a place like this?” Optimus stopped and folded his arms across his chest, staring up at the new passages. “I don’t like this. We should be trying to find our way back to the surface, and it looks like these all go deeper. This isn’t a good idea.”

Sentinel groaned and dramatically slammed his forehead into his palm, the _clang_  echoing down the tunnel. “ _Shh_ ,” Elita-1 hissed, and then wondered why she’d done that. It was a deserted planet. But somehow, she felt as if loud noises were a bad idea.

“You’re shushing me? Really? Come _on_. This isn’t the Iacon _Library._ ”

 “Have you ever even _been_ in the Iacon Library?” Optimus grinned at Elita-1, who rolled her optics at Sentinel’s response.

“No, Optimus, because I’m not a _complete_  nerd. Come on, let’s get going. Pick a tunnel.”

“Wait a minute. Shh, listen.” Elita-1 ignored Sentinel’s groan and stood very still, tuning her audials to pick up the sound again. It was a faint scratching, like something rubbing or crawling along the stone walls. “Do you hear that?”

“No—” Optimus paused. “Wait. Yeah, I think so. What is that?”

“Probably nothing. Let’s get moving.”

In Elita-1’s peripheral vision, a section of shadows larger than any Autobot _moved._

But only for a second, and she told herself it was just an overactive imagination.

***

“How do you get to be Acting Magnus without ever going to the _Library_?” Glyph stammered in horror. Blackarachnia stared blankly at her.

" _That’s_  what you’re focusing on here?”

“…Sorry. I’m listening now.”

Glyph’s pet, currently curled up by the small Autobot’s feet, lifted its head and yipped. Blackarachnia glared at it. “No one asked for _your_  opinion.”

“Don’t be mean. Mercury’s just—”

“Interrupting?” Blackarachnia rolled all four optics. She hated to admit it, but arguing with the creature was slightly easier than discussing that ill-fated trip.

But only _slightly_ , and she might as well get it over with. Then she could decide what to do to keep the Autobot from running straight back to Autobot Command—if she still wanted to.

Of _course_  she would still want to. Blackarachnia pushed aside the thought with a huff. No amount of tragic story-sharing had kept Optimus from running straight to Command with her story—if she couldn’t convince her oldest former friend to protect her, a near-stranger certainly wouldn’t.

She would need a more aggressive solution. It was a shame. Now that the immediate panic had worn off, she didn’t particularly want to kill her only company.

***

“Did you hear that?”

“Really, Optimus?” Sentinel huffed. “Lighten up, already.”

“No, he’s right.” Elita-1 stopped and listened, eyeing the three tunnel branches ahead cautiously. It could have come from any one of them, and with all the constant echoes, it was almost impossible to tell which. “Listen. There’s something else down here.”

“Aw, come on.” Sentinel rolled his optics. “You two are about as much fun as—”

This time, the movement in the shadows was undeniable, even before the shape launched itself forward into the range of the trio’s chassis lights.

The spider loomed up in front of them, huge and hulking, looking like it probably outweighed even Sentinel. Before Elita-1 could dodge back, or lash out, or even scream, she was covered in the shining purple mesh she’d seen stretched between rock formations on the surface, and hit the floor unable to move.

It _hurt_ , and panic jolted through her frame as she realized that no matter how hard she struggled, the webbing didn’t even begin to loosen.

Sentinel’s shield flashed to life, and suddenly the webbing gave out, freeing her arms. Before she could wonder what had happened, Optimus was hauling her upright, ax in one hand, helping her frantically brush off the sticky, shiny mesh. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. _Ugh,_  I take it back. This stuff’s not so beautiful!”

The spider hissed and yowled, lunging forward at the trio. Optimus and Elita-1 dodged left and right; Sentinel wasn’t quite quick enough, and hit the floor with a resounding crash, shield clattering off to the side.

Spark racing, Elita-1 activated her download module. The external scan casing on her forearms hummed to life, glowing an eerie bluish-green in the semi-darkness. At the sight of it, the spider reared back, letting out a hiss that seemed to reverberate through Elita-1’s audial sensors. _Bright light. They don’t like it. That could be useful._

“Elita, what are you doing?” Optimus swept his battleax across the tunnel, forcing the spider to back off. It lashed out, barely missing the two of them. “Your power won’t work on an organic!”

Elita-1 scrambled backward, using the split-second of breathing space to reach Sentinel’s side and plant one hand on his arm. “Who said anything about _my_  power?”

His fallen shield responded when she reached out for it, snapping onto the grip that suddenly materialized on her arm as if it had been made to fit her. There was no time to strategize—the spider shot forward with optic-blurring speed, dust swirling around it, and slammed Optimus out of its way so hard he crashed to the floor several yards away.

Time seemed to slow down, and instinct took over. Elita-1 whirled to the side, dodging the spider’s first strike, and glanced across the tunnel, taking in everything she could see in a flash. Sentinel and Optimus, both down. Three tunnels, any one of which could contain more spiders. The ceiling, layered with jagged—

_Stalactites._

Mirroring the movement she’d seen Sentinel use so many times during training runs at the Academy, Elita-1 swept her arm back and hurled the shield in a wide arc as the spider turned toward her. For a single, awful second, it seemed that her timing had been off—

Then the edge of the shield slammed into the base of the stalactite, snapping it cleanly at the widest point. The heavy chunk of rock dropped with the force of an entire shuttle—straight down through the spider’s abdomen as it lunged toward Elita-1, pinning it to the floor in a single strike.

The spider screeched once, an awful chilling sound, and went limp.

Silence fell over the tunnel as Elita-1 surveyed her handiwork, watching carefully to make sure the spider was truly offline. It didn’t twitch, and after a moment, purplish internal fluid began to seep through onto the floor—a sure sign of a fatal hit, or at least it would have been in a Cybertronian. With organics, you never knew, but at least this one didn’t seem inclined to get back up.

Optimus had picked himself back up. “Sentinel, I think we’ve just been officially outclassed.” Despite the situation, Elita-1 couldn’t help a satisfied smile as she handed Sentinel back his shield. _And you thought my extra hours in training were a waste of time._

“Come on.” When she looked up, Optimus was already starting back up the tunnel. “No amount of history or energon is worth this. We need to get out of here.”

“Oh, come on.” Sentinel didn’t move. “It was _one_  organic, and we dealt with it.”

“We?” Elita-1 remarked dryly, smirking at the slight grimace the correction drew.

“My point is, it’s taken care of. Give me one good reason we shouldn’t stick around.”

Behind Optimus, the shadows began to move. Elita-1 felt her spark sink and her fuel tank twist with a horrifying realization. Of course there wasn’t just one. There was _never_  just one.

“How about three?”

Suddenly the tunnel was filled with huge dark shapes and purple eyes everywhere they turned, blocking off the way they had come. How long had the spiders been following them? How many were there?

“Run!” Sentinel’s shield flashed to life, forming a brilliant energy blockade across the tunnel. “I’ll cover your retreat! Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”

A horrible hissing and rustling filled the tunnel, shadows materializing into huge dark organic forms, and without stopping to think, Elita-1 bolted down the nearest tunnel, expecting Sentinel and Optimus to be at her side any second.

She didn’t realize, until the sounds had faded away behind her and the tunnels were silent again, that her friends were nowhere to be seen.

***

“By the _AllSpark_. Why didn’t Autobot Command know about the spiders? Shouldn’t those have been in the warnings for the planet?” Glyph shuddered, and her obnoxious little canine pet responded by practically climbing her legs. “I mean—surely they would have said something about that? Did they know? Someone could have been _killed_.”

Blackarachnia blinked, and tried to figure out if Glyph was making a terrible joke or if she genuinely hadn’t made the connection. Glyph stared innocently at her, and Blackarachnia groaned and let her helm drop into one hand.

“For _spark’s sake._  Do you need flashing neon signs to notice anything that doesn’t involve your precious research? Of course Autobot Command knew about the spiders, and of course they didn’t tell us. Because the planet was _off-limits_ , and all Autobot Command cares about is blind obedience. What about them makes you think they’d give a  _r_ _eason_? Did they tell _you_  about any hazards on this planet?”

“I—” Glyph opened her mouth to speak, and stopped mid-sentence, stammering. Blackarachnia almost cut in with a snide remark, but something in the little Autobot’s optics stopped her.

Glyph had realized _something_. Blackarachnia couldn’t be quite sure what it was, but if past interactions were any indication, she wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. Glyph didn’t appear to have any concept of an unspoken thought.

Sure enough, after only a moment of silence, Glyph spoke very softly.

“Do you think they knew about this ship before I came here?”

Now _that_  was a good question. Why hadn’t it occurred to Blackarachnia that Glyph’s great discovery might not have been so unknown to Command? And if they already knew, what did they stand to gain by sending a single lone researcher to the planet?

“You’re the Autobot,” she said dryly. “What do _you_  think?”

Glyph appeared to swallow hard, and pulled her pet a little closer. From the way she stared off into the distance, it seemed she was giving that question some deep thought.

“I…I think I should stop interrupting and let you finish your story.”


End file.
